5: Castling in the woods - [Fade To Black B03]
The coffee was lukewarm. Even though he'd made sure to pour it into his new thermal flask that very morning, by noon the dark brew had already cooled inside the forest-green painted metal beneath his reedy fingers. He sighed internally. Another failed precaution. It seemed that even the little things were not going his way, lately.
"The last pair has been formed, sir. Nora Valkyrie, and Lie Ren." the man turned with a clack of his extended cane to meet the report of his right hand.
Approaching the edge of the rocky cliff he stood upon, was a tall woman, with blonde hair tied in a backwards-bun with a chin-length braid over her right ear. Her bright emerald eyes met his earth-brown orbs under her thin, rimless ovular glasses. She wore a white pleated shirt that ruffled out just after the cuffs at the ends of the sleeves, which was tucked into a high-waisted golden-buttoned black pencil skirt which ended just below her chest. Her legs underneath it were covered by dark grey stockings, that fed into knee-high black boots. As she stepped over a clump of knotted grass, her purple-lined dark cape flowed behind her, the cut of its many tails styled like velvet flames. On her earlobes, turquoise earrings shook, matching the pendant gem on her necklace, and she was clasping a glass tablet in her arm.
They were situated on the grassy precipice of a cliff, overlooking the densely wooded sea of green that stretched out to the horizon beyond the limits of the Kingdom of Vale proper. The high, umber-faced jagged cliffside provided a natural defence against the grimm, and none of the native flying breeds would ever make it over an entire huntsmen academy to assault the city behind it. As such, the Emerald Forest was the perfect environment to test initiate huntsmen and huntresses in a relatively controlled environment. Relatively that is, not wholly.
"More pressingly, however, we have a situation." she firmly held out the device to her superior. It showed a trio, two walking on whilst an armoured girl bashed her fist against a tree and caught the mechanical spear that was loosed from its trunk. "I have been checking their transcripts as the students introduce themselves to each other. Someone, a young male horned faunus, did not show up in our database."
"Oh really? A horned faunus, you say? Has he been any cause for concern, thus far?" the man gingerly took the tablet from her, and rewound the footage.
"His very presence should be a 'cause for concern', but I'm sure you mean by your standards, Headmaster?" she shook her head lightly, "Nothing too dangerous, so far. He has met Jaune Arc, and Pyrrha Nikos, after clearing out several Beowolves. You surely noticed that windstorm emerging from the canopy? He caused that whilst he was seemingly invisible."
"Invisible to the cameras, you presume." Several semblances, after all, produced effects only visible to the in-person eye. It was well-documented that only specialised electronics could detect certain aspects of aura. Expensive specialised electronics, used in major broadcasts of tournament matches, but far too fragile, bulky and dependant on regular maintenance to justify the purchase of hundreds to lay about a grimm-infested forest.
"Yes. So, how will we respond?" she pressed.
"Must we react so hastily? Since receiving Taiyang's message, I have been expecting a horned faunus by the name of Ichigo Kurosaki for two days now. To think he would arrive in initiation, is a tad unexpected, but from this footage, he appears to be getting on amicably enough with the pair. We shall question him after the initiation, Glynda; –he apparently wishes to meet me." he answered.
"You're already considering him another student, aren't you?" she sounded resigned, but expectant of his decision. "A curious late addition, I'm guessing?"
"Mm-hmm." he nodded with a small upwards tilt to his lips, at being found out so easily. He looked up from the display, directing his gaze back down to survey the Emerald Forest hundreds of meters below, stretching out to the clear blue horizon. The sun was high, casting warmth and dazzling light over the day of the initiation. The Headmaster of Beacon Academy took another sip from his flask. Bleh. It was far too cold now. He would be switching back to his usual mug, after all.
Another unexpected element, but the foundation remains. The man on the wide cliff's edge tapped at the tablet's glass, drawing from a signal cast kilometers away. On the screen, it displayed what was sure to be his most crucial student; the future silver-eyed warrior, currently bickering with the Schnee heiress.
Now they would make a promising pair...
"Think this is it?"
Jaune pointed with his sword's reflective drawn tip at the dark entrance. It was a cave's mouth; a sizable rounded hole cut into the soft sedimentary rock of a hillside. The stone was pale, and had cream-ish coloured horizontal bands along its face. Just outside the smooth tunnel, ochre cave paintings depicted figures with spears doing battle with what looked to be an immense scorpion.
Ichigo trudged up to the paintings to inspect them closer. The monstrous arachnid the paintings were portraying probably really existed, and at that massive size too. It was a given that all sorts of fantastical beasts physically existed in this dimension, rather than only as spiritual creatures. He'd only been here for three (give-or-take) days, and he'd already run into a kraken, some sort of miniature dinosaur, and warg-wolves. Giant scorpions weren't really all that out there at this point.
He faced back to the armoured duo that had been following him. Jaune sheathed his sword, and Pyrrha's boots crunched as she walked up along patchy, yellowed dry grass underneath the shade of a low knobbly orange broad-leaved tree to gaze into the dingy depths.
"You think they'd make us go into a whole cave system? This is just the initiation for you two. Isn't that pushing it a little?" he asked her sceptically.
"That might be a little true..." she considered whether it was worth it briefly, before deciding, "but it can't hurt to check!" she smacked her fist into her upturned palm enthusiastically. "We can just search in there for a little while, and then leave before we risk going in too deep and getting lost."
"Fair enough then. Hey Jaune, you ready?" Ichigo turned to see the knight breaking off a second branch from the low tree he was standing under, stripping the amber leaves from the arm-length twigs before reaching into his right front pocket. He jerked his hand around in there hastily, hopping on one foot, before switching to the left. At last, he dropped the sticks and reached into his back pocket to pull out a squashed red box of matches.
"Aha!" He spent another ten seconds straightening the side of the box enough to strike a match against, holding the bent lit matchstick to the top of the twigs tied together to fashion a shoddy torch. He held it aloft proudly, beaming at the other two. "Does this answer your question?" Pyrrha clapped politely, whilst Ichigo just stared at him flatly.
"...Good enough for me, I guess. Alright, let's get moving. You're setting the tree on fire, by the way." he tacked on, dryly.
"Aaaah!" As Jaune panickedly tore off the smoking low-hanging branches that caught alight when he held his makeshift torch up, he missed the amused smirk that grew on Ichigo's face as he pivoted around.
Ichigo was halfway to the cave's wide mouth when—
"Wait! Wait, hold it!" the blonde jogged in front of him, barring his way into the subterranean tunnel. "I'm the one with the torch here, I should lead the way." In response, Ichigo just shrugged at him and gestured for the huntsman to go ahead. He let Pyrrha's steady stride overtake him too, leisurely following in the back with his arms held up, fingers interlaced resting behind his horned head.
- –—{}—– -
The cave was smooth. Smooth, wide, and oddly clear. It was as if someone had come and cleared a path right through it; the stone ground was uniform, a deep slate grey and decently flat, stalagmites were only on the sides of the broad cavern, never in their way, and the stalactites weren't so low-hanging that they had to duck all that frequently. It surprisingly wasn't that much of a hassle. Ichigo didn't have much spelunking experience, but he was sure that caving was rarely as straightforward as this.
"Maybe they really did hide something down here. This tunnel's clear enough that they might've cleared the way for students." Ichigo suggested.
"You think so? I wasn't so sure myself if this is the right way at this point. It would be strange if they hid the relics any deeper than here." Pyrrha replied whilst stepping over a puddle in the warm torchlight. The golden glow against her amazonian outfit backed with the inky darkness made her resemble an Athenian red-figure of Greek pottery.
Jaune sighed dejectedly. "Fine, then. I made the torch, so can you two just humour me for, like, five more feet? Promise we'll go back soon if nothing comes up."
"Why're you saying that as if setting that crappy stick on fire was any difficult?" Ichigo jibed. "I don't really care either way. It's you guys who are actually getting tested right now."
"You've said something like that earlier," Pyrrha glanced at him questioningly in the flickering gloom, "are you saying that you're not actually taking the initiation?"
"I wound up here on accident. I have a clue where I am, though. Beacon, right? I just need to talk to the Headteacher, Ozpin, here." Ichigo clarified, hands in his pockets as he strolled just behind her.
"About what? Are you sure that you don't want to attend with us?"
"It's about getting back home. I've got people waiting for me, and I'm not interested in this career, anyway." Ichigo ducked warily at the sight of a small cauldron of pale yellow-furred bats nestled in the shadowy crags of the ceiling. They must have been sleeping during the day. He was caught up in the sight a little as he walked by; it was the first time he'd seen bats so closely without a zoo's plexiglass, and with such an exotic colour to their pelts, too.
"That's... too bad. I hope you get home soon, though." Pyrrha smiled lightly back at him.
"Damn, you're refusing the offer to become a huntsman for your family?" Jaune meanwhile, stomped forth, a ways in front of the both of them. "That's, like... the opposite of what I'm doing. Why would you give a chance like this up?"
Ichigo huffed. "Family's far more important to me than some job. Besides, I don't have any money here. Don't you have some kind of, tuition fee, or something?"
"W-we do!?" Jaune stumbled over in distress and dropped the torch. It rolled away over the smooth stone in the bracken gloom.
Pyrrha chuckled, a palm raised to her mouth. "No, we don't. The world always needs more huntsmen, after all. Adding a price tag to the opportunity when you're already prepared to pay with your life would be too much." She lowered her hand and leaned forward, peering at the torch as it smouldered away and dimmed. The damp stone must have made the fire die down. "...And I think that's our queue to leave."
Jaune groaned as he lifted himself up from the hard rock floor. "Alright, let's turn back..." as he raised himself up however, his eyes caught onto a glimmer. A bright yellow orb, luminous in the gloom. "Yes! Finally! Look!"Jaune sprang to his feet eagerly, and it was then that Ichigo noticed in the dim light that his sky-blue trainers were labelled 'Right' and 'Left' on the white soles, in scuffed permanent marker. Seriously?
"We found one!" the hoodied knight ran forward and seized the luminescent spheroid, only for it to twitch out of his grasp.
"Jaune...?" Pyrrha hazarded, as she reached out to him with her black-gloved arm.
"Hey! Gotcha!..." Jaune latched onto the light source, his fingerless gloves tight over his clenched knuckles. His eyes, at first drawn in frustration, widened as the orb moved again, only this time pulling him along with it as it rose in the air. Cerulean irises dilated in numb shock as the light reshaped from an orb, to a more pointed shape, dragging him up. Hands frozen, he remained limply hanging, suspended a good four meters off of the ground, as bright red swirling patterns crackled and fizzled into a swirling radiant network. The carmine glow highlighted a great white-roofed carapace, eight spindly saw-edged onyx legs, attached to an equally-black abdomen, and a lofty cranelike white-plated tail with a toxic-yellow telson.
The glowing outline of a scorpion. A colossal scorpion, far darker in its black sections than the Beowolves had been, with its main body easily taller than an average door frame, and dazzling bioluminescent claws the size of a small car. All ten of its uniformly orange-red, circular pupil-less eyes lit up; it had fully awoken.
"Bad... relic..." Jaune's stiff whimper was answered with a low, thrumming hiss from its tar-black mandibles, reverberating throughout the entire cave system and causing the cluster of yellow fuzzy bats that were roosting farther back in the tunnel to skitter awake and flap about wildly.
Jaune replied with a hysteric scream. A long, drawn-out tremulous scream that rivalled the titanic scorpion's hiss.
"A... a Deathstalker..." Pyrrha swallowed her fear as she hastily drew her weapon, Miló clicking and whirring as it shifted and extended to allow a greater reach. "Jaune! Jaune! You need to get down from there! But, but fall to its side, so it can't pinch you!" she backed away unconsciously, as the scorpion's eight ebony, jagged legs tensed, raising its chitinous body from the cave's floor. She sputtered as a figure stepped in front of her, finally remembering Ichigo's presence. What the hell was he doing!?
"Ichigo! Get back! Don't get any closer! We can't fight it in this cave!" she blurted out.
Ichigo, meanwhile, sauntered forward, casually strolling up to the bus-sized monster. Double-decker bus-sized. Brilliant sapphire energy blazed in his palm, before it condensed into a hazy, smoking pointed bar jet-black in the center and bleeding a vibrant blue at the edges. He peered back at Pyrrha's rattled stance behind him, an eyebrow raised at her frenzied demeanour. "Quit worrying, you need to steady yourself. Get ready to catch him if he falls." Ichigo switched back to his latest foe. "A giant scorpion, eh? Can't say I've fought one of those before." Ichigo shook his ankles about to loosen them, rolling his shoulders as he ground the tips of his orange trainers into the stony floor in a mild warmup. So that was why the cave was so clear; it was a burrow. Or was it called a den, when something big dug one?
The scorpion, or deathstalker, as Pyrrha called it, lurched forwards. Ichigo charged at it, dashing to meet it head on. A claw, as tall as he was, lashed out at him, but Ichigo caught it with his left hand on its upper side and vaulted on top of it. Before it could open, and let him fall into its grasp, he kicked off with his feet in a leap from the claw onto the creature's plated back. His hands found a sure grip on a bed of moss that had surprisingly grown into the osseous exoskeleton. How long had this thing sat there? The space Ichigo had to move was wide; as tall as he was, his feet weren't close enough to the huge arachnid's face to be endangered by its pincers or mandibles, nor at risk of being shaken off the sides and trampled either.
As Ichigo steadied himself on the monster's back, it lurched as it began to step. There was only one person in front of it now- Pyrrha. Ichigo reared his head back to check on her position, only to find she was already sprinting away, towards the surface. Looks like she's planning to face it outside. Alright then, time to get to work. As the creature picked up speed, from slow, sluggish waking steps to a swift, steady alert rhythm of its eight legs, Ichigo raised the foggy dagger of reishi in his right and jabbed it down at a joint in the ashen-white plates. It broke on impact, merely leaving the shell scuffed a little whilst shattering into dissipating glowing shards. He raised what was left of it to his face, probing the broken bar in his right hand. Well, that was the point of practice, after all. He'd try refining his technique now, as it went. He raised his hand with another fresh beam of reishi. Above him, Jaune shrieked in terror once more.
A swarm of bats raced out towards the entrance, close enough to them that Ichigo could make out their pale fingers in the membrane of their white wings, against the blurring ceiling. They were a fuzzy yellow cauldron around the haphazard fleeing group.
Pyrrha sprinted out into the forest just before the massive red-white-black blur that was the Deathstalker careened out of the cave mouth behind her. It was fast for its size. Deadly fast.
"Jaune! Whatever you do, don't let go!" she yelled behind her as it gave chase.
"No wait, don't do that! Let go now and roll to the side! Before you get thrown off!" Ichigo hollered from his mounted position on the scuttling beast's back, surrounded by yet more ethereal blue-black shards. Damn, this was getting annoying. He still couldn't focus his reishi to a fine enough degree to pierce its damn exoskeleton. Never let it be said he didn't relish a challenge, however. Any minute now...
"What– what– what do I do? You're giving me mixed signals here! Do something already!" Now out in the open, the Deathstalker's toxic-yellow tail could flex properly. It reared back, jostling Jaune's grip, and flicked out, the immense strength shooting the teen knight away across the forest like an organic trebuchet, over the treeline. "Whaaaaaah!" The sound of his wail only tapered off because he sailed out of earshot, and sight.
"Pyrrha! Did you see where he went?" Ichigo called out as sparkling circuits rolled down from the skin under his white t-shirt's sleeves to his palms. Maybe if he tried it with blut...
Her thoughts paused at the sight of his bedazzling semblance, before hastily replying, "His aura should protect him! In fact, this thing can't see him anymore! You just focus on staying on there!"
"His aura? Oh, he doesn't have one." Uh oh... maybe that was important for 'huntsmen-ing', after all.
Pyrrha almost halted dead in her frantic tracks. "He what!? What do you mean he doesn't have an aura!? How did he even get into Beacon!?" she shrieked over her shoulder as she ran. Her jade eyes widened in worry as she hopped over a woody root. This was bad, and so very dangerous. Without an aura, Jaune was sure to be injured from falling from such a height with a velocity like that. And in this forest full of grimm, being injured without an aura was as good as a death sentence if she couldn't reach him.
"He'll be alright, won't he? Even as green as he is, you guys are all warriors in training, aren't you?" Ichigo asked evenly, his tied hoodie flapping about his legs as he looked back at her inquiringly. "Also, could you please try and lead it over a less bumpy path? I need to find a steady angle here."
"How are you so calm about this!? Every huntsman on Remnant uses aura!" Immediately she changed course, sprinting towards Jaune's angle of take-off. Yep, Ichigo noted, aura was definitely important for huntsmen-ing. He'd have to apologise to Jaune later. Then again, it's not as if he'd known any of this a couple hours ago.
Pyrrha caught sight of a stone structure in the distance, of ringed columns stacked high. She picked up the pace, racing at full tilt to reach her new partner. She knew she was already too late to catch him, but she still intended to reach Jaune before anything else did. As she approached, she could make out the distant crack of gunfire. Was someone else already there? That was good.
Concurrently, Ichigo was about to make his first attempt at blut arterie. This would be the offensive, rather than the defensive Quincy boost from channeling reishi and reiryoku in tandem through his blood vessels. Specifically, his arteries. The branching pattern of right-angles shifted, finding the correct lines, as he pulled his legs up higher, pushing his torso up off the scorpion's moss-overgrown back. He put his left hand forwards, leaning on it, arm extended to its full length, and hefted his right arm over his head. A flash of cobalt reishi flared in his open hand before he closed it into a firm fist, the blue coalescing into a ghostly dark stake, sticking out the bottom of his grip. With a focused, fluid motion, he brought it down on the scorpion. Not at a joint, nor a link, nor any manner of vulnerable spot. Instead he directed his blow where the organic plating was thickest; where its defenses were greatest. This would be a true test.
The stake speared down, piercing the exoskeleton with the sound of shattering porcelain. Ichigo grinned, as black, tar-like gunk spurted out in a miniature geyser, dripping viscously all along his right arm. The Deathstalker hissed and spasmed, faltering in its pursuit of the bronze-clad girl at being pierced so deeply in its back. Finally! Results!
Now to keep going...
- –—{}—– -
Jaune screamed as he whizzed over the woods. He'd been doing a lot of that, lately, it seemed.
Midair, the knight clocked another figure in the clear blue sky. A girl, dressed in a midnight-black-and-red dress, with a black, red-trimmed frilly skirt that was held to her thighs, clasped at the waist by a silver rose brooch. Glossy black boots, lined with wine-red soles and laces, rose up her shins, the colour of the laces matching the threads criss-crossing her stomach area. She was falling through the air, her scarf-like scarlet cloak flapping above her head. Ruby!?
His sapphire irises widened at the silhouette of another gargantuan grimm, one with the appearance of an oversized crow, soaring above her. A Nevermore. He'd never seen one so big. Not that he'd seen many at all, but that didn't make it any less true. If anything, it made it more true, when you thought about it. Had she been flung off of that one too? What were the odds? It was funny, really, how unlikely was—
He crashed into her flailing form, bodies colliding together with a loud, horizontal-momentum-halting smack, the gothic girl uttering a light "Oof", whilst the auraless Jaune was disoriented by the knock. He reeled back with a pained yell, inadvertently rolling the girl around him to take the brunt of the impact against a particularly tall tree at the edge of a clearing.
This accidental action protected most of his body, except for his left hand, which stuck out beneath the duo's floundering tangle as they fell down against the trunk. When they hit the grassy floor, it was with a loud thump, and a wince-inducing crack. Both laid limp at the woody roots before the girl sat up first, leaning against the bark.
"Oohhh... what was that?" She glanced down at the prone figure on her lap.
"Ow-how-how-how-ow! Aaaaah!" Jaune cried, clutching his left forearm. It was already swelling up. That wasn't a good sign.
"Jaune? Your arm! It's broken!" she exclaimed.
"I can feel that, Ruby! What do I do?" Jaune sat up heavily, clutching at his limb.
Ruby hesitated. She'd never had to deal with a broken limb herself before. Thanks to aura, only two people had broken bones in her old school, and the instructors had taken care of it both times. At Signal they'd taught them some basic first aid, but skipping two years didn't help matters much here. Neither did the fact that the bulk of medical knowledge was learnt in a proper academy, either. The kind of academy they were in the initiation for, right now. "Uh–, um, set it?"
"Okay, great, you got a splint? Can you tie it for me? I've only got one arm at the minute." Jaune grimaced in the most optimistic way he could express.
"Uhmn, not really. Why don't you just sit tight, here on the ground? I'm sure that you'll be safe!" Behind her, the massive Deathstalker burst into the clearing, knocking down two lofty trees with a resounding crash. Her wobbly hopeful smile fizzled out on her face.
Ichigo was rocked back as the Deathstalker buffeted over a small hill, and adjusted his grip as his trainers slipped, peeking across the lush slope the gigantic red-patterned scorpion was skittering down.
The Deathstalker at this point was more of his experimental pincushion than a murderous beast, its back slick with its own gooey tar-like viscera. There were holes across its osseous exoskeleton, perforations from Ichigo's on-the-fly practice with blut arterie. Only at this point, it was clear that he wasn't getting anywhere by just poking at it. His attempts at arterie were only successful about a third of the time; it was far too unstable, and unreliable right now. He'd need a new angle of attack.
And as the monster barreled into the clearing after Pyrrha, he remembered he had one; he felt his combat pass in his pocket, drawing his attention, reminding him of its presence as he slammed into the huge arthropod's mossy back. Internally, he was glad that these grimm creatures' physical bodies usually dissipated on their deaths. This slimy substance would definitely ruin all of the clothes he was wearing otherwise. Although, he didn't plan on fighting in them for much longer.
The Deathstalker ploughed through two tall thick-trunked trees, cracks racing up their brindled bark on impact, in a shower of long splinters. Ichigo took this as a prompt to take his leave. Raising his knees in a swift burpee to his feet on the scorpion's back, his tied black hoodie flowed behind him at his waist, before he leapt up to grab hold of a rough fissure in the higher one of the collapsing logs. Running blut vene over his digits to prevent any splinters, Ichigo hooked his fingers into the widening gap before pulling himself up onto the toppling timber. As it fell, he sprang off of it, hurtling high through the arboreal air before forcefully landing with a blut-assisted roll. He raised his horned head, sticking one arm out to his side whilst resting the other on a knee.
"...Did that guy just jump off a Deathstalker?"
His attention was drawn to two girls, also in combat gear similar to the other two teens he'd met, only they were bereft of armour. One in a golden buttoned brown jacket, left open at the top, that trailed behind her slightly, matching her leather pouches at her waist. Her long blonde tresses of hair fell behind her, down to the white pleated cloth hanging behind her waist. She was wearing black shorts and fingerless leather gloves, with high brown boots that had orange socks sticking out, though the left one had a grey bandanna tied around its knee. At her wrists, were small metallic yellow gauntlets.
The other, who'd spoken, wore matte black leggings and low-heeled shoes, the tights gradiented from black to dark purple at her ankles. They were under white fabric shorts and an undershirt, over which she had a... frilled sleeveless black tailcoat, clasped together by a single silver button. Ichigo wasn't sure what else to call it. Around her forearms, black ribbons were wrapped to protect her wrists and palms, matching a small loose black scarf on her neck and the large sable silken bow on the crown of her raven-haired head. She was holding some sort of gunmetal-grey rectangle on a handle in her left hand; probably an oddly-sheathed weapon. At least it was clear that this wasn't a gladiator-type situation, judging from how Pyrrha and Jaune had greeted him, so he wouldn't have to fight these two.
Even so, he was still taken back a little when the blonde girl's lilac irises recoloured to a piercing crimson, and her flowing blond locks billowed out as she burst into flames. Huh, that was... what, the third person he'd met who could do that?
"I can't take it anymore! Can everyone just chill out for two seconds before something crazy happens again?!" she roared.
Ichigo got up, since it seemed like she wasn't in the mood for pleasantries, and gave a subtle silent nod to greet the black-haired girl. She quietly smiled back at him, and returned a small wave. Well at least someone was being nice. Her amber-yellow eyes kept flicking to his horn, but he didn't pay it any mind.
He scanned around the wide forest clearing, the size of a good few football pitches. The giant scorpion was currently preoccupied with Pyrrha, who looked to be doing much better in an open space than in the cave. Interspersed throughout the wild grass, were copses of light-purple long wildflowers that resembled lavenders. In the centre, there were solid, tall cylindrical columns holding up two thirds of a partial, broken circle of smooth grey time-worn stone. The base of the pillars were sat on a plinth, with stairs hewn from ancient rock leading up to it from all sides. Thick, pink-flowered vines grew sporadically over the twenty-meter wide altar, and yellowing lichen encrusted the ruins. Inside the raised circle, a row of smaller, far shorter columns acted as pedestals, holding up small white and black objects. Ichigo was surprised that this Beacon academy let students go near something like this, considering how antiquated it looked. Usually, ruins as old as this would be protected by all sorts of barriers and security, but then again, this was a monster-infested forest, after all.
As well as the overgrown temple, Ichigo spotted three more people rapidly approaching other than the two girls he'd just walked past. Jaune and Pyrrha, of course, who were approaching him now, only the blonde was holding his left arm stiffly. Crap, had he broken it? Ichigo didn't know any healing kaidō. He hoped that didn't mean he failed this test they were taking, unless this was one of those you-just-have-to-survive sort of scenarios. Honestly that'd make things a lot simpler.
Behind the pair, another girl approached, one in a gothic full-sleeved dress. Her hair was cut one-sided, cherry-tipped black falling to her chin's length on the right of her face, and a bang that rested mid-cheek on the right. Behind her, a carmine cloak undulated in the soft Southwards breeze. It was when her bright, lively silver eyes, juxtaposing her emo-esque attire, met his that Ichigo realised something. The resemblance was uncanny; she looked exactly like Summer. As in, near identical. This had to be Mrs Rose's kid, the one that got in early. So if she was near, then her half-sister had to be nearby.
"Ruby!" the blonde girl squealed as she broke out of her frustrated stupor to run to the shorter newcomer.
"Yang!" she raised her arms to give her elder a hug. Well, that answered that question. He could already tell apart Taiyang's features inherited in the older sibling.
"Nora!" a ginger girl in a loud pink skirt with a massive silver hammer barrelled between them. Ichigo jerked around, to find a black-haired boy, in a dark green Chinese-styled páofú tailcoat, at his side. How had he not sensed them? Why could he still not sense the new guy? Was he suppressing his spiritual pressure? This was the first person he'd met who'd evaded him like this in this world so far. However, before he could inspect the latest arrivals any further, Summer's youngest daughter spoke up.
"Uhm... Yang?" she tugged on her sister's short sleeve and pointed up, hesitantly. Ichigo's brown eyes followed her pale index finger upwards, before his left eyebrow twitched.
"How could you leave me!?"
Another girl was there, only this one was hanging onto an ashen-white talon as big as she was. The talon of a behemoth bird, covered in a coat of onyx feathers each as broad as a door frame. From its ponderous wings, each as long as a house, extended two white-tipped claws, each. The only other white on its otherwise jet-black body was its mask; a long-crested bone-white mask emblazoned with blood-red patterned swirls that covered all five of its luminescent eyes. A toe-curling caw erupted from its mouth as it flapped its wings, projecting its call all across the forest. Its tail feathers, each as long as a limousine, trailed behind it like inky brushstrokes in the canvass of the open sky.
"How long has that thing been up there!?" Ichigo yelled.
"Hey, that's pretty rude. You should hope that girl didn't hear you." the ginger girl, Nora presumably, interjected, leaning forwards whilst idly twiddling her hammer horizontally behind her waist.
"You know what I mean!"
"Oh, that Nevermore? Like, the entire time." the gothic girl, Ruby, answered flippantly. "Nice to meet you, by the way. I'm Ruby Rose."
Ichigo skipped the pleasantries. "And you just left her up there!? She could fall any minute! How long were you planning to leave her on that bird's leg?"
"Psh, she'll be fine. I fell off it too and look at me!" Ruby motioned her left hand to her chest, proudly.
"You crashed into me and the fall broke my arm!" Jaune exclaimed.
"Well, I'm still fine though. You getting hurt doesn't mean Weiss will be." Ruby pointed out.
"You better hope so. She's gonna fall." the bowed girl pointed out. It seemed the avian grimm was shaking its left leg, whilst flapping erratically to try and shake off the white-haired girl.
"She'll be fine, Blake." Ruby nodded, eyes closed.
"She's falling." the boy in green flatly announced. The girl had almost lost her grip now, and would plummet any second.
"Alright! Alright! Fine, I'll handle this." Ichigo shoved both his hands in the air as he huffed exasperatedly and strode towards the circle of pillars. Looks like they couldn't air-walk in this world, or at least at this point in their training. As much as he'd like to test himself solely on his Quincy abilities further, it was clear to Ichigo he probably shouldn't mess around when a life might be on the line. Still, as he palmed his pentagonal combat pass, that didn't mean he'd have to go all out and end it instantly without any fanfare. That might bar any of the trainees around him from showing off their skills, preventing them from passing the initiation, however it worked.
Porcelain-white strips, the same substance as a hollow's mask, erupted from his right hand, which exploded into a blaze of shadows. It enshrouded his entire body, over his casual clothes, before tightening and focusing into a pitch-black layer, that was soon mantled with white armour. His fullbring formed a white carapace over the darkness, only this time, its appearance had changed; his torso's protection resembled the armour he wore in the Blood War: An alabaster cross over his chest with red scaled pauldrons on both shoulders. The rest was similar, but slightly altered. His face still had the band across the bridge of his nose, and his arms and legs were still covered, but the protection at his flanks were now two small angled ghost-white plates at either side of his torso, under his arms. He looked himself over once, before he crouched in the grass, and vanished.
"That's so cool!" Ruby hopped up on one foot, palms held against her chin as she squee'd.
The black-haired girl, Blake, frowned and glanced about, "Where did he—" an ear-splitting squawk cut her off.
They all looked up to see the Nevermore rearing back in midair, Weiss now clinging on with one hand on the talon for dear life. It was much higher up than the altitude Ruby had dropped from, she noted with a frown. Still, their attention was all drawn to the top of the pillars where Ichigo had somehow perched himself on top of the broken circle held aloft by the columns.
Ichigo tightened his grip on the machete-esque shortsword in his right hand, generating an oversized shadowy manji as he bent his knees in a side-on stance to the roc-sized grimm. He focused a new, small blue-black ribbon of reishi to join its centre, and breathed out. In a fluid slash, he swung his blade from the lower right side of his body, all the way up diagonally to the upper left over his head. Like a raging torrent, the cross of reiatsu spiralled up dozens of meters. It flew true, striking the Nevermore, but instead of detonating, it stabbed into the shrieking beast, embedding itself halfway into its breast. The ribbon of reishi hardened and coalesced into a lengthy, black chain.
Back on the ground, the watching party watched on in abject shock at someone whose semblance had deeply pierced a hide which high-impact dust rounds and all manner of aura-projected slashes could not. Ichigo cracked a smile as he gripped and ran his fingers over the chain, which was emitting blue wispy smoke of reishi. This was the most complex thing he'd tried to create so far, but combining it with his fullbring seemed to ease the process. It helped that it was identical to the chain on his old Quincy Tensa-Zangetsu.
He gave it an experimental tug, before just as the girl in the ice-blue dress fell, he braced his legs with the neon flickers of bringer-light, and vaulted into the air, yanking on the chain to pull himself at the Nevermore even faster. Unrefined as it was, it was far too brittle, and snapped as he whipped himself up on it. But that was fine; he'd already transferred his momentum, as he rocketed upwards with his shortsword held out in front of him like a bladed missile.
Like a strawberry-blonde torpedo, he whizzed through the cyan expanse of the sky. One arm, his left, was held out at his side, ready. His right, had blut vene running along its tensed wrist to reinforce his physical joints and sinews for the impending impact. All at once, it happened.
Ichigo harpooned into the Nevermore. The manji from his fullbring had since dispersed, giving him a clear point of impact on the gargantuan bird's ebony-downed underbelly. Up to its pentagonal hilt, his silver blade sunk in, boring straight through its bulletproof hide like a rod through tissue-paper.
Simultaneously, his left arm snatched out, plucking the petite teen under her arms to grasp her against his side. She grunted as he halted upside-down. Ichigo held one knee on the feathered abdomen, his right foot leaning on its toes, and his right arm tightly gripped the impaled weapon. An invisible harness of reishi kept him stable against the forces of gravity.
"Thank... you..." the white haired girl wheezed out. She must've lost her breath from the rapid switches of momentum.
Ichigo, still inverted, looked down –or up, rather– at her, clutched in his grip in the same manner he carried Rukia on Sōkyoku Hill years ago, and smirked coyly.
"Ichigo Kurosaki. Nice to meet ya."
She met his expression with an albescent eyebrow raised over an ice-blue scarred left eye. "Charmed. Schnee, Weiss Schnee. I don't suppose you have a plan to get us down, anytime soon?" Her ponytail and silver necklace hung upwards from Ichigo's perspective.
"You think you can handle a jump from here?"
"That's... outlandishly hare-brained." she sounded like she wanted to call it far worse, but held herself back for the moment. Ichigo didn't rise to the bait.
"Not you jumping from here; me, with you in my arms." Ichigo scoffed, shaking his horned head. "I'm wondering whether you're gonna regurgitate your bowels out all over me mid-air. If that happens, I'm dropping you, by the way."
"Not much of a knight in shining armour, are you?" Weiss replied tartly.
"If I had shining armour, you throwing up on it wouldn't help. So, you good to go?"
"Hold, you ruffian, there's no need for that. Just get me Myrtenaster, my rapier, and I can get myself down."
"What? Then what's the point of me jumping here? Why'd you scream for help if you can get down on your own?"
"Well, obviously both of my arms were clearly preoccupied with holding on." the girl snarked back. "I cannot both draw it and proceed to load it before I hit the ground, of course."
In response, he let go of his shortsword's white shaft. Weiss's pale eyes widened, and she almost squeaked in shock, but stifled it when the orange-haired faunus, Ichigo, didn't plummet with her under his arm. He remained upside-down, suspended from the effects of gravity. His semblance? This was a new one.
Ichigo smothered the amused grin that wanted to break out across his face at the snow-white girl's reaction, and instead pulled her sword out for her. It was a long, sleek thing, chrome in its sheen, fine in its point and a revolver in its hilt. Eh, as far as weapons went, he'd seen stranger.
She fiddled with it before murmuring, "Yes, yes," she looked out at the distant ground. "I am ready." she held it straight over her shoulders, pointed out at the quavery visage of the woodland below her.
Ichigo replied by dropping her without a further word. She made a small whine at the rude lack of a reply, but nevertheless waved her rapier's point in a ring below her as she fell. A black snowflake, circled by a purple incandescent ring, was projected beneath her. As she passed through it, her momentum was slowed to a crawl, allowing her to take her time drawing another ethereal ringed snowflake, this one on the ground below.
Ichigo considered what he witnessed, crouching invertedly. The symbols the girl summoned out of her own reiatsu were the only example he'd seen thus far of someone of Remnant willfully manipulating their external reiatsu, and to such a skilled degree too. Earlier, the elder of Summer's daughters, Yang's, flames were made out of her expelled reiatsu, but they had been wild and uncontrolled. The guy in the páofú tailcoat had managed to snuff out his reiryoku signature to such a degree that even he couldn't sense it, but that had all been internal. At least this albino girl using her spiritual energy in this fashion raised his expectations for what he could expect here. Although, the violet ring did have a strange feel to it...
As the Nevermore expelled another strained caw, Ichigo redirected his gaze to the weeping gash that remained oozing out along the huge crow's underside. Looks like he could add a lack of regeneration to the piling list of these bootlegs' inferiorities to hollows. They really were nothing like them. A lack of reiatsu, individuality, unique appearances, consciousness and, most importantly, true strength.
Ichigo reached out, gripped his hide-sheathed sword, and leapt out, running his fullbring along the arc of his bound towards the tail-side. His arms flickered with the light of a novice blut arterie, as he ripped his blade free and spiralled loose to the floor far below. He hit the grassy clearing harder than he'd preferred to, failing to switch from arterie to vene in time. Ichigo added swapping between the two to his mental list of things to work on, as he smarted from the landing.
A loud whoop and cheer greeted his descent, from both Ruby and the ginger girl. It seemed that everyone else had gathered at his landing site. He stood up straight, but before anyone could speak, Pyrrha called out in a mad dash towards the colourful group, the colossal scorpion at her heel. "A little help!?"
"Great! The gang's all here! Now we can all die together!" Yang proclaimed dramatically, arms out with the palms upturned.
Ichigo rolled his eyes at her frazzled display. Melodramatic, much?
"Not if I can help it!" Ruby blurred away in a storm of rose petals, identical to her mother's, only they were red rather than white. From her back, she unfurled a rose-red metal scythe taller than she was, with a gunmetal-silver blade, prong on its hilt, and sections of the shaft. The rest was as red as the highlights of her outfit, only with a metallic lustre, including on the top of the weapon, on the flip-side of the cutting edge.
"Ruby, wait!" Yang cried as she outstretched her gloved arm. What was she doing? Did she really expect to just charge in at a Deathstalker and beat it?
"Haaaaaah!" With a battle cry, she flipped her scythe around and fired it, gaining even more speed as she built further momentum from the loud bang's recoil.
With a single swipe of one car-sized bone-claw, the rampaging arthropod knocked her flying back with a pained outcry.
"Ruby!" Yang was already in motion, running at full steam across the open field to save her. And yet, with her pace, she was much too far away.
Ruby twisted and met her sister's gaze, silver eyes wide with a panicked sheen. It was then that things went from bad, to worse, as the building-sized Nevermore let out a spine-tingling trill and whipped its inky trailing tail feathers at the small teen. Ruby flinched and jolted at the sight of a burst of osseous spines that propelled towards her. She was about to duck when—
"Whoa, who knew it could do that. Is that thing a gun, too? Sorry if this messes up your score, or something." All twelve of the sharpened-bone feathers were embedded in the matted ground around her. The orange haired boy, with the horn, stood in front of her, feet flickering a neon green. He'd deflected every single one of them, at once?
"Am– amazing..." she breathed. He could keep up with her semblance?
He glanced back at her, with a shallow smile. He could see why she was allowed in early; that speed was as fast as an average shinigami's shunpo. Still, he was caught off-guard when she was knocked back, since she seemed so sure of herself charging in. Did she really expect to be able to pierce it? He could see what Mrs Rose was worried about when she feared her daughter skipping ahead two years, now. Before he could say anything, he noticed a white blur approaching them both. It was the snowflake-symbol girl from earlier. Her focused countenance made him turn around, to be met by the sight of a table-sized stinger bearing down on them both.
As soon as he saw it, Ichigo acted on instinct and met it with a bash of his forearm. It was sent flying wide, but Ichigo's right arm came away with a mark of its own. The telson had jabbed into his muscles, through the ivory vambraces of his fullbring. Evidently, his living body's blut vene was still far too patchy. As Weiss arrived to continue fighting, Ruby yelped in horror at the sight, and clutched at his side. Yang finally reached them, and swore loudly.
"Your arm! It got stung!" she paled, before affirming her voice, "We need to cut it off, now." she rambled.
Ouch ouch ouch— "Wait, excuse me? 'The hell are you saying?"
"A Deathstalker's venom is fatal without immediate extraction! Hold still, Ruby, you can close your eyes if you want, just get your scythe—"
"Nope nope nope, I'm fine. See?" He held his forearm up, showing the brilliant glittering circuitry bathing his right arm. Every now and then, an acrid purple substance would spurt out of the wound. It burned as the venom was contained and discharged. This hurt, a lot, but he could bear it. Nothing much could compare to getting a hole blown through your chest at point blank, after all.
Ruby's colour returned to her blanched face, bringing curiosity with it. "Your semblance? How many things can it do?"
Ichigo rolled with her suggestion. "More than enough." He turned to see Jaune arrive with Pyrrha and the green-pink pair. He looked far more weary than he had the last time he saw him. It seemed the pain had drained him.
"So your arm got messed up, too? Can you still do that thing, again, with the giant cross you threw?" he pointed past the group, above the verdant treeline to the bleeding Nevermore with his good arm. " 'Cause that thing's circling back. What're we gonna do?"
Weiss was thrown back to the multicoloured septet, leaving a thick wall of ice behind her as she found her stance in the tangled grass. "Look, there's no sense in dilly-dallying. Our objective is right in front of us." she gestured at the ancient plinth a few dozen meters away.
"She's right. Our mission is to grab an artifact and make it back to the cliffs." Ruby affirmed, nodding at the other short girl. "There's no point in fighting these things here."
Ichigo felt his temple twitch in annoyance at this disclosure. "What? Hold on a second here, you're telling me that the test isn't actually for you to slay these monsters?"
Jaune answered confusedly. "Of course. We were told only to get the relics and return to the cliffs! Why didn't I remember running away was an option?" he slapped his right hand in an open fist to his forehead.
"...And nobody told me this? You mentioned relics, at most, like twice. You mean that you're not judged on combat at all?"
"The test involves combat, but it is not the primary focus. Is there a reason we must discuss this now? It isn't our fault you refrained from paying attention on the launch pads." Weiss riposted, still facing the Deathstalker.
"The 'reason to discuss this' is that there was no reason for me to not just kill both of these things, and finish up already. I was holding back to let you people get a better grade!" he rounded on Jaune, holding his left arm out, pointing in vexation. "I blame you for my arm getting stung!" Ichigo growled, shaking his agonised, still-glowing right limb.
"Me!?" Jaune pointed at him own face with his right hand. "But my arm got broken, so I'd say we're even."
"That was also your fault! That's not how 'becoming even' works!" Ichigo huffed, before waving away the rest of the huntsmen-and-huntresses-in-training. "Look, I'll take care of these things, just... do whatever you're supposed to." He sauntered away from them towards the two hulking grim. Constantly suppressing the venom with blut, he wouldn't be able to fight anywhere near as easily in his physical body any longer. So he drew out his combat pass again, smirking aggressively as he flashed into his dark shihakushō, feeling Zangetsu's familiar presence on his back.
Ruby gawked at him again, only this time it was at his massive body-length wrapped blade. "Wow!"
The green-garbed boy probed over the departing figure of Ichigo. "How'd he manage that? Woven dust? But his horns..."
"Hold on! What are you going to do alone to those things? Entire teams of huntsmen would struggle against both a Nevermore and a Deathstalker at once!" Blake shouted. "You saw what happened to her!"
Weiss spoke up next, incredulously, "She is correct. What exactly are you planning to achieve?"
Ichigo slowly snaked his hand over his left shoulder to the hilt of his cleaver, not turning back as he spoke. In his spiritual body, not only was his arm fine, but a wound as minor as that would've been regenerated instantly anyway. "What am I planning to do? Cut them up, of course. Obviously, I was clearly preoccupied with allowing all of you to handle it, but apparently I didn't need to worry about any of that." he casually snarked back to Weiss. She sputtered at the callback as the bandage slowly unravelled itself from Zangetsu's sealed state.
"Wait! If you're still going to fight, then we can stay and help!" Ruby proclaimed, brandishing her mechanical gun-scythe.
Ichigo considered for a moment, looking over his shoulder with his coal-black, lurid yellow-iris'ed left eye. They were all slightly taken aback at the sight of it, but held firm. "Geh? Didn't you just say you didn't need to? Never mind, if you wanna help... then I guess you can try and get that scorpion grimm in the air when you hear the other one hit the ground." He jabbed his thumb backwards at the oversized arachnid. With that, he disappeared with a supersonic clap.
Yang blinked blankly, before she was the first to speak up. "Uhm... anyone got an idea, then? For the Deathstalker thing, of course."
Surprisingly, it was Jaune who spoke up first. "...I do. I'm not sure what he's planning, but I know a way we can just kill it ourselves anyway after we get it in the air like he said. I can't do it myself, obviously, because of my hand... but you guys can follow my directions, right?"
"We'll handle that part." he turned as the other boy placed his hand on the knight's plated shoulder. "Lie Ren. What's the plan?"
- –—{}—– -
Ichigo sprung into action, drawing Zangetsu as he flashed from invisible reishi foothold to foothold mid-air. The cloth whipped away behind him, as it unfurled revealing the metallic gleam of his zanpakutō. Slinging it in a whirling spin, he eyed the Nevermore's wings first. At the size they were, it would make for a laughably easy target. Pulling his grip taught on the white strip, he hooked it forwards, sending it darting up with the pop of a collapsing air column left in its wake.
Near instantly, it met its mark and skewered the right ebony wing. Against the marine-blue sky, the silhouette of the grimm faltering in flight held a resemblance to an oil spill marring the open sea. Ichigo bounded up, tugging at the ghostly bandage, even as he sailed over the avian monster faster than it could comprehend. Zangetsu held fast, forcing the wing to twist and contort as it struggled to keep itself in the arboreal air. Instead of landing on it, Ichigo pulled the grimm up to his feet with the cloth, before walking along its pierced, awkwardly outstretched right wing. As he strolled along, giving the combatants on the ground time to prepare, he lowered his hand and ran his fingers through the jagged onyx needle-like feathers. They were razor-sharp to the touch, and would probably shred the skin of a normal human, but to Ichigo's hierro-protected digits they didn't even feel prickly. Unlike the Deathstalker or Beowolves, this bird didn't have any spines or weighty armour plates, probably to aid with flight. It really was just a massive, masked crow. Once he reached his sword, sticking through the pennon upside-down, he stretched out and tapped at it with the fingertips of one black-crested hand.
Zangetsu's sealed state sublimated away in blazing bright gold embers at his touch, as it was absorbed back into his body. Directing it down both arms, he let out a flare of reiatsu from both banded wrists; orange-red on the right, and light-blue on the left. Bleach...
"...Zangetsu." With that utterance, his true blades manifested. His pure-white khyber longsword in his right, with a hollow hole running up its centre and a lengthy handle, and his jet-black enclosed dagger in his left. With his shikai released, Ichigo got to work.
He flipped back, head over heels, to the rear of the Nevermore, just above its billowing tail feathers, his waistcloth gliding behind him. The bird began to flap again, now that its wings were no longer obstructed. It appeared to be following the group on the ground, who were herding the scorpion past some further ruins, almost to a bridge over a foggy chasm in the distance. No way he could let these things reach that; the bridge looked far too old and important to be allowed to take any damage. Ichigo did not want to be blamed for destroying any public property or archeological landmarks, right before he met the owner of this place. He'd take it down here.
He burst into a sonído towards the head of the bird, only immediately after falling into step he slipped to his back, and turned it into a hypersonic feet-first slide all along the top of the grim. As he went, he dug his Quincy-dagger into the hide of the beast, dragging its keen edge through as he skidded along its feathered spine.
Once he cleared the five-eyed mask, he flew free, flipping round in mid-air to re-orient himself and inspect his handiwork. The Nevermore gave a low croon, before it fell dead-silent, forevermore. His flat lips took on an upwards lilt as a line opened up, laterally across it from beak to tail feathers. As a cascade of putrid sloppy gunk and viscera erupted from the steadily-widening fissure, it became clear what had happened: Ichigo had bisected it. Quite cleanly too, given how even the line was between the two halves. He glanced down, and shook his head at the sight of the people he'd met amid the ruins below. Nope, it wasn't falling here.
Sheathing his swords, he belted in front of the pitching corpse, the beak's two vertical halves were still fairly close. Close enough that he could— grasping out, he caught both halves of the beak with between his right hand's fingers and thumb, pulling the entire roc-sized bird's body together –Yep.
He wrangled it back up, changing the angle it was facing until it was clear it wouldn't hit anybody when he let go. Alright, showtime.
Ichigo somersaulted over the dissipating body, until he was on top of it again. Landing in a heavy knee, he spun his longsword off his back and over his horned head, whipping up a blusterous whirlwind from the swirling weapon as he began to fall. Checking the ground, he saw Yang and the boy in the páofú-styled robe fending off a red-patterned pincer each, whilst Ruby took suppressing pot shots at the stinger from afar, next to Jaune. He clocked the positions of Weiss and Nora close to its sable legs on either side, and how Pyrrha was keeping it in place by jabbing at its luminous eyes and spiny mandibles with her extended spear. So focused on the terrestrial grimm, they hadn't seen what he did to the avian one. Then again, it was pretty quick. They were ready, but just waiting for a signal to move; his signal.
Slewing his white hollow sword over his head, Ichigo brought it down, pinning what was left of the rapidly decaying grimm and sending it plunging down towards the ground under his knee. He dropped like a stone, waistcloth flapping up about him as the Nevermore impacted into the dirt with an earth-shattering slam. Ichigo raised his line of sight, ready as he made landfall.
"Now!" Jaune shouted at the crashing sound as he, Pyrrha and Yang shunted back, withdrawing as the hammer-wielding girl leveraged her weapon's metallic silver head under the Deathstalker. It detonated, the directed explosion rocking the tremendous arachnid up high enough for Weiss to be able to draw another of her snowflake glyphs. This one was a pale shimmering blue, but still had the purple ring around it. Ice spires erupted from the symbol, with a lilac glow to them from the combined colours that forced the scorpion to rear back, eight legs scrabbling at the air, its chitinous underbelly exposed. That was Ichigo's cue to step in.
It was far too crowded for a shikai getsuga, but he had another, marginally more focused tool in his arsenal. Drawing on his hollow reiatsu, focused in the space between his alabaster horns, a translucent crimson orb oscillated as it converged into existence with a sub-sonic thrum. Lining his horns up with the soot-black underbelly whilst it was still in the air took less than a second, as he tensed his legs and bent his ankles.
"Bala!"
The vermillion orb blasted forth, thick as a tree trunk, leaving rings of dispersed air pressure in its path. It didn't hit the Deathstalker so much as carve a hole straight through it, like a bug on a mounting board. The scorpion was angled such that the beam continued up, passing though its back as if it wasn't even there, out over the Emerald Forest. Across the dense woodland, students all looked up at the scarlet ray in wonder. Birds, normal-sized ones, took off in great flocks, cawing loudly at the sight.
Ichigo slid down the dissolving carcass, cinnabar lightning flickering across his unscathed shihakushō's bicoloured fabric. He sheathed both of Zangetsu, the dagger at his waist, and the longsword at his back, as they were bound by cloth once again.
An uncommon, sincere wide smile adorned his face as Ichigo ambled over to the rest of the initiate huntsmen. They really had pulled through with that last manoeuvre, not that he was all that versed in 'proper' teamwork himself. The last person he'd fought side-by-side with was Aizen, of all people, and that was out of desperation more than anything else.
He reached their group, where half of them stood silent, staring at the clean, perfectly circular hole in what was once a bus-sized elder grimm. It seemed especially large ones such as these took extra long to disappear. The other half, were all staring at him, silently, in shock. Hmm, even if they hadn't seen what he did to kill the Nevermore, maybe he overdid it. But then the hammer girl, Nora, cheered at the top of her lungs, both arms over her head.
"That was the best thing I've ever seen! Ever!" Well, at least someone appreciated what he did. Hopefully flexing like that wouldn't become some sort of national incident, or something.
"Wow..." Jaune breathed. He turned to the others, "...is that what they teach you at combat school?"
"I wish there was a school that taught you something like that." Ruby sighed.
"How... how does that even work? Hard-light dust? But no, no way..." Weiss descended into a mumbling fit, trying to wrap her head around what she had just witnessed.
Ichigo nonchalantly walked by her, nudging her lightly as he passed. "Magic. My horns and eye work that way too, before anyone asks."
The raven-haired boy tilted his pink-highlighted head at the scorpion's perforated cadaver, shrugged, then twisted around and nodded at him subtly. Ichigo nodded back, before passing and sauntering away, towards the ancient stone-carved bridge in the distance.
"I'm going to the cliffs, you said that Headteacher geezer Ozpin is up there, right? Catch up once you grab those relic things, wherever they are." He waved back with a cross-banded arm without turning his horned head. He remained in his spiritual form, seeing as how his living body was still compromised at the moment.
Back at the Deathstalker's diffusing body, Pyrrha finally uprooted her eyes from the evanescing arthropod's rent shell and rubbed at them, at Ichigo's reminder of their objective.
"Oh, right! Relics! The relics! Initiation, hah!" Her nervous exclamation drew attention from the other two still-transfixed girls she hadn't spoken to yet, the black-bowed one, and the yellow-handkerchiefed one, Yang, apparently.
"Oh, right." the darkly-clad girl exhaled.
"Well... That was a thing!" Yang nervously laughed. "Right... Blake?"
Blake groaned.
A metallic-green flask of coffee shattered on the brown jagged boulders at the foot of the cliffs, hundreds of meters below. Across the sea of trees stretching into the distance, a brilliant red beam blasted into the stratosphere. It was as thick as a pencil, from the vantage point miles away on the cliffs of Beacon. A mass of birds all over the Emerald Forest took off in great dense droves at the shock, such was their number that their frenzied calls carried all the way to the staff-members' ears.
The noon air was mild, if a little on the warmer side. Up on the cliff, the enmeshed grassy space was broken up by some small boulders and a short copse of thin twiggy witch-hazel trees, planted by the academy's gardeners a few seasons ago for a splash of colour on the otherwise flowerless expanse. Their unusual stringy-yellow petaled, burgundy-cored flowers would remain blooming for another two months or so.
Headmaster Ozpin recomposed himself after his initial bewilderment at the spectacle, reaching up and adjusting his circular brass-rimmed spectacles with his now-free hand as he watched the shifting cloud of startled birds.
"Glynda?"
She slowly stepped into place beside him, gaping at the space where the beam had flown. "Sir... the cameras... they didn't show any of this..."
"Hmm... You mean to say this was not dust-based weaponry we just observed, Ms Goodwitch? That is... most intriguing."
"Intriguing, and concerning!" she exclaimed, "To think someone, a prospective student in that forest has a semblance capable of..."
"This? It is a good thing that they are here for us to guide them, then. You already have a general idea of whom it was?"
"It occurred in the midst of the groups battling the Nevermore and Deathstalker simultaneously." In her hands, the glass displayed the camera's recordings of the last two minutes. "When you ordered us not to intervene, I'm assuming you did not expect this to transpire?" The touchscreen showed the initiate huntsmen knocking the giant scorpion into the air, suspended with a combination of ice and gravity dust before it was blown through by an unseen force. In the background, the Nevermore's bisected body cratered the ground from off-screen, neck-first, but without any clue as to what had slain it.
The silver-haired man considered what he had seen. A clean hole; a circular hole. The aftermath bore a faintly recent echo in his mind. "Ah, I see."
It could not have been... no, he hadn't felt a thing at any moment of the beam's duration. The magical arts were assuredly out of the question. And yet...
His deputy had already caught onto the actor. "Ozpin, sir, there was only one other student in that vicinity who did not show in the footage."
"Coincidentally, they just so happen to be the mysterious arrival who showcased his ability to evade cameras earlier..." the Headteacher finished.
"A 'curious late addition', indeed..." Ms Goodwitch repeated acerbically.
"Not to worry, I shall take care of this." he thumped his mechanical cane at his feet. "I have been expecting him, after all."
NEXT: 6 - MATCHMAKING ON ARRIVAL - [The One Path To Take]
Author notes:
I was debating on whether to get the Emerald Forest over with in one go, or split it up. I decided that I prefer to have at least one important thing happen every chapter, and initiation is one big important thing, so here you go, the longest chapter yet, lol. Also I chose a bit more energetic track this time, one a little more adventure-y. Just make sure to turn the volume down.
Concept art of the cave:
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Thank you for reaching 100+ reviews, 300+ favourites and 400+ follows. I'll keep writing, and paying attention to your comments (just as a notice, I do have coursework due in a week, so there may be a delay there). Although, speaking of reviews, I will say that to all of the suggested pairings, I'd already decided on the one when I posted the last chapter. Sorry about that, but hey, at least this way you won't feel disappointed weeks and weeks from now when I do eventually reveal it. (It's way too early now).
I'm using a combination of official concept and promotional art as references for my RWBY descriptions, so they might differ from the show a bit. I did a bit of searching, and actually found a gallery of the stuff. Ichigo's fullbring redesign is exactly the same, except the chest is now his white TYBW cross armour. Something important to note is that the forest's cameras in this are all visual-only, without audio. You'll probably notice that I've been changing small elements of the world of Remnant to better meld the two systems, such as what the conventional cameras can pick up.
Did you know that a group of bats is called a cauldron? Oh, and the cast is met, here. I threw in a little dramatic irony, what with how Yang questions who in their right mind would charge a Deathstalker head on when Ichigo did exactly that a few paragraphs ago. I made Ren's semblance work as an extreme form of spiritual suppression, to try and connect the systems a bit more. When I say 'average shinigami', I mean rank-and-file, obviously. You'll notice I only properly described half of them, mainly because it'd just feel monotonous to read through if I listed them all out inorganically. Instead, I opted to (mostly) do it as Ichigo observes them. The rest will get their time very soon.
Speaking of soon, none of the major twists I was alluding to last time have happened yet, but I did create a minor one by having Jaune break his arm since he didn't unlock his aura yet. At the end, he's just wow'd by the aftermath, since he still can't see Ichigo. This injury will serve as a wake-up-call, since he has now tasted the consequences of the risks he'll face more properly early on. Not that I'm gonna focus on him or anything, this'll all be in the background. The guy is the MC of practically every top RWBY fic already, I don't think I need to touch him all that much. Ichigo's reaction to his 419er transcripts will be a bit more, 'delinquent-ish' than the rest of the casts', of course. There are other things subtly set up here, too, which I hope you notice.
Another twist hasn't happened yet, but the build up is now there. Specifically, notice what canon character interactions didn't happen, because Ichigo decided to flex. That is all I'll say.
Oh yeah, the meeting is still being built up. I'm not going to portray Ozpin as some sort of micromanaging-sperg, but yeah... it won't go according to plan (at all), and it won't even be the headteacher's fault.