17: CONCRETE JUNGLE - [Attack On The Beat]

The shopping centre was in ruins. Abandoned to time, like the rest of Mountain Glenn.

Not even the homeless took refuge in the dead city, the prowling of grimm proving too dangerous for any men. It was no longer a place that belonged to mankind, and hadn't been for a long time.

The high glass doors were thoroughly cracked and grimy, only the reinforced glass kept it from falling apart into tinkling shards. The building was tall, with a metal frame between its windows and a foundation of worn brick. The there wasn't a rooftop; instead, the glass-metal frame met in four converging semicircles, in an Art-Deco like design.

It was built in the heart of the city, one that had long stopped pumping with commerce, in its own open space. A wide stone stairway led up to the large entrance, lined with stone-carved exterior bannisters. The grandness of the entrance and the glass roof made it look more like a botanical greenhouse, than a shopping centre. A grim irony, given what the place housed inside itself now...

Halfway up the stairway, a headless Griffon collapsed and dissolved on the wet steps. Adam sheathed his blade with a practiced flourish, stepping over the vanishing body. He turned to face Ichigo, and the street full of decaying grimm behind them.

"You first." he gestured to the broken automatic doors.

"What? You said that at the last place we hit, too." Ichigo grumbled. "You scared, or something?"

"Not a chance." he retorted.

"Then you do it!" Ichigo demanded, pointing at the glass that was now slimy in the rain. "That door's nasty! I'm not getting that rusted gunk on my sword's handle. You're the one with gloves here."

Adam huffed, then trudged up to the doorway, left hand on his rose-engraved sheath. Blush, he'd called it, Ichigo remembered. Wilt and Blush... a fire-dust sword with a short hand-cannon for a scabbard. He'd seen it in use many times over as they traversed the city.

This was one of their last surface-level stops; after that it was straight underground. Adam had already been taking care of the Venus Roots on the surface apparently, for quite a while before Ichigo showed up. His own ongoing exorcism of the city had been progressing as well, since most spirits here were too traumatised to even talk, he hadn't exactly been taking long enough to make Adam annoyed with him. Hah, as if that was a positive...

The masked man's right hand reached out, gripping the left frame of the broken door, and tugging it wide with his sheer strength.

With a grinding creek, the cracked glass door slid open, revealing a bush. A very dark bush, covered with white knife-like thorns. It almost seemed to be writhing in the darkness.

"Hn..." Adam inspected the bed of thorns, then stepped back.

In a blur, he unsheathed Wilt directly into an upwards cut, singing and burning away the vines in a vertical gash. Now, the thorns clearly did writhe, sizzling away and letting fresh stalks take their place. Adam moved to make another cut, but a grip on his shoulder stayed his hand.

"Lemme try." Ichigo moved in front, then tossed a vial of fire dust right into the middle of the moving stalks.

He clapped his hands, and the vial exploded into dense orange flames, burning away at the vines. A slight manipulation of the reishi on his part had the fires rapidly spreading throughout the bed of thorns, sticking to the grimm-plant like spiritual napalm even under the hissing, spitting rain. It wasn't long before the path inside was clear.

"I'm surprised it worked under the rain." Adam remarked.

"I've got skills. Thanks for the dust." Ichigo replied smugly, entering first. He flexed his reiatsu, creating a cloud of steam as he insta-dried his body.

Ichigo wasn't sure what to expect, but a Remnant shopping centre's layout was pretty... normal. Of course, this one was abandoned, and covered in monster-plant vines, but he could tell that when the place was actually running, it hadn't been all that different from a Japanese Earth mall; just more technologically advanced in nature.

The front chamber was dimly lit from above by moonlight and lightning flashes filtering in through the leaking glass ceiling, held up by a grid of black metal frames. It was properly night now, but Ichigo's hollowfied left eye and Adam's faunus physiology allowed them both to see perfectly in the near-total darkness. There was a fountain, long-dry and filled with stagnant water, with what looked like a white-black bulb on top. The benches were all still standing, but Ichigo wouldn't exactly be eager to try sitting down on any of them, even without all the thorns. Cracked and overturned tiles covered the floor, and two rusted escalators were left to rot at the back, leading to the main hall.

Ichigo strode forwards, just as Adam grabbed him by the trailing arm.

"What?" he tilted his head.

Adam pointed at the giant dormant bulb. "Do you know what that is?"

"Something that'll probably attack me when I get close enough? That's how these things usually work..."

"You're... infuriatingly right..." Adam shook his head, and Ichigo in turn shook off his arm. "That's an Amorphophallus. It's an offshoot of the Creeping Venus."

"An amorpho-what?" Ichigo double-took.

"I said, an Amorphophallus." Adam emphasised. "It's also called a Venus Spadix."

"And I said, an amorpho-what now? Did you people seriously, seriously give it the name phallu—"

"–I'm not the one to come up with the names!" Adam yelled over him. "Just use the other one!"

"Whoa..." Ichigo made jazz-hands. "Why'd you even tell me about the first name, then? And watch yourself. Are you trying to wake it up~? I thought it was 'super scary' or something~?"

"Oh, drop the act." Adam muttered. "Don't pretend you care now."

"Look, if it'll make you happier, I won't wake it up on purpose to fight it like I was planning to—"

"–You were what!?–"

"–Like I said, I won't do that. I'll just kill it before it blooms. Quit spazzing out, scaredy-cat."

"Spazzing out!? I am not scared of it at all, you imbecile." Adam growled. "Fine, go ahead, wake it up on purpose, then. I'll gladly take it on. I've barely gotten a challenge since I came here, anyway."

"Wait, really?" Ichigo grinned. Maybe this temporary 'partnership' could work out, after all.

"Yes, really." Adam restated, stretching his arms. "Bring it on."

"No take-backs." In a flicker, Ichigo was at the bulb's side, and knocked twice on it like one would a door.

It immediately bloomed, peeling back its black exterior to expose the bony white deeply-furrowed petals, and an acid-green luminous centre spadix spire that was over three metres in height. Guess that's where it got its first name from... he thought dryly. Huh, he could swear he'd seen something like this before on TV... what was it again, a corpse flower?

Unlike a corpse flower, however, the plant didn't stop there. It emerged from the ground, shooting up into the air on a massively elongated, flexing, fibrous stalk up to almost the ceiling of the hall. Then it tilted the tip of its spadix down, to point directly at Ichigo.

"Cool! I bet that thing shoots stuff, right?" Ichigo jerked his thumb at the monstrous plant, as his head faced Adam with a smile.

"Move, you fool!"

A stream of neon-green fluorescent fluid spewed down from the tip of the flower's spire right at Ichigo, who stepped out of the way without even looking.

The missed discharge hissed and spat as it bubbled away on the ceramic floor slabs. Acid, huh? It was imbibed with soul dust, so he could tell where the foul-smelling stuff was at least.

"Well?" Ichigo gestured to 'go-ahead' nonchalantly. "You were saying? C'mon, back it up, then."

"Alright, alright!" Adam snapped, drawing his sword with an aura slash, the vermillion blade cutting the spadix of the flower right off in a translucent wave of reishi. The corrosive liquid inside frothed and overflowed, as Adam dashed towards the base of the stalk, climbing the fountain in a single bound, and leaping into a two-handed slice from right to left.

As the head of the flower fell, his hand dropped to his waist and whipped out Blush, firing it mid-air before the severed flower came close to him. It burst apart, blown back into the wall opposite them.

Adam flourished his sword after landing, flicking off the noxious green grimm-fluid with a cocky smile at Ichigo. "See? No fear at all. I was just worried about you."

"Me?" Ichigo pointed at himself, then scowled. "I'll show you! I'll do double!"

"Better make that triple." Adam motioned behind Ichigo with his chin.

Without hesitating, Ichigo whipped the sealed Zangetsu off his back, spinning it in his hand in a whirling circle and simultaneously unfurling the bandage sheathe around it. After a second, he heard three squelching thuds as more of the dissolving plant grimm fell apart on the ruined floor tiles. They must've sprouted from the ground.

He smirked right back at Adam, who huffed as he sheathed Wilt. "Next room's all mine."

"How about we take turns?" Ichigo suggested.

"Deal."

- –—{}—– -

The rusted escalators led up to a floor with a balcony, with doorways into multiple abandoned shops. The middle of the space was open and empty, revealing all of the floors and the no-longer-moving stairways criss-crossing between them like a techno-organic rainforest canopy. Each floor was seemingly overgrown with thorns of the Creeping Venus, and there were several more of the luminous Spadixes germinating all the way from the ground floor, growing to rise to their height. The very bottom floor itself was out of sight, since the space seemed to stretch underground, but an eerie green glow emanated from its depths. Thick trunks of white-flecked ebony grimm-bark stretched from floor to ceiling, spreading bone-white nettle-shaped faux leaves to blot out the moonlight from above.

"It's like an indoor jungle..." Ichigo leaned over the creaking railings for a closer look down below.

"All of what you see are just different parts of the Creeping Venus, given different names because it's just that big. Enough so that all of the offshoots were once thought to be different species entirely..." Adam commented, raising a hand to his chin. "That strange glow to them isn't natural. They aren't bioluminescent, normally."

Ichigo gripped the railings a little tighter. "There was a company here... Merlot Industries. They were experimenting with a type of dust, using people's souls. Looks like they worked on grimm, too. I don't know any biology here, but I think the dust must've mutated the Venus, or something."

"Despicable." Adam spat condemningly. "The depths humans sink to will never cease to shock and disgust me."

"I've seen some messed up stuff too, but it was at least for a reason." Ichigo frowned. "I don't think these guys even had an end goal, beyond just researching their own experiments. Fat load of good that did 'em. Did them in, probably."

"I'll seek some contacts out." Adam vowed. "If they are still around, they won't be for long."

"Tell me when you do." Ichigo nodded. "I'll come along too."

Adam smiled at that. "And here I thought you were a Beacon Huntsman, or at least employed by them. Usually people on the legal side of things are afraid of doing what needs to be done."

Ichigo didn't indulge him. "I'll do what I need to. I'm not really the type to care about the law that much, but I won't just stoop to killing people either. You know, me agreeing to come along doesn't mean I'm joining a terrorist cell."

"A revolutionary group." Adam corrected, crossing his arms. "And don't bother telling me that. I learnt the hard way that someone being there doesn't mean they want to be be there."

"Ouch. Almost sounds like you got dumped, man." Ichigo jabbed sarcastically.

"I did."

"Ouch." he winced. This time, Ichigo meant it.

"How did..."

"On a train. She announced it quite loudly, and revealed she wasn't very loyal to me." Adam told with gravitas. "It was quite awkward for the ride home, and even worse once I stepped off and had to explain things to everyone else."

"Oh." Ichigo hadn't much experience in that department, but he could tell that was a pretty dirty thing to do. It sounded downright ugly, honestly.

"It's why I'm in Vale in the first place, actually. I really want to ask her what the hell that was all about." he spoke tersely.

Ichigo let go of the railing, waltzed over, and clapped a hand on Adam's shoulder. "Listen man, forget whoever this girl is. She sounds like a bitch, honestly. It's not worth your time, just move on."

"Move on...?" Adam repeated askingly.

"You've got other things in your life, don't you?"

"Well, yes? I suppose I do..." Like the White Fang... and vengeance on Atlas...

"So just let it go. Drop her. She's not worth it, and she's not worth you."

"So what am I supposed to do instead?"

"Whatever you want." Ichigo shrugged. "Just don't keep pursuing her. That'd be pathetic, really. You're better than that, and you're better than her."

"..."

What did he want? Adam wasn't so sure now.

He had two goals, when he'd arrived in Vale: Kill Cinder Fall, and find Blake Belladonna.

A boon, she'd called it in her message. What a farce.

His plan was to destabilise the kingdom of Vale, advancing the White Fang's agenda whilst simultaneously spiting Cinder and throwing her plans completely off-course. The problem was, would any of this be able to kill her? He wasn't so certain after their last meeting. Maybe a bomb...

Even then, a mass-scale assault on Vale would greatly escalate how seriously all of the other kingdoms took the threat of the White Fang globally. As appealing as the thought of a cityful of dead humans was, if they weren't prepared for the fallout, getting by would become more than difficult. Perhaps it would be better to save the resources and element of surprise for besieging Atlas, instead?

And Blake... If anyone else had told him what Ichigo said just now, he'd have decapitated them in a blink.

–But he'd already tried that with Ichigo, and all he got was a punch to the jaw and an insult that hurt even worse for it. So he could... try hearing him out? The idea of not seeing Blake again hurt, and the idea of not punishing her for her betrayal hurt even worse. Adam couldn't understand how he was just supposed to 'let it go'. He didn't want to never see her again, just... how about just giving it a little more time? That was better.

"...You really set my head straight. Thank you for your words." Adam nodded. "I know what I want to do. I don't think I'll be sticking around in Vale once we're done here, after all."

Ichigo was right; revolution and Total Human Death should come first, instead of his own hang-ups. He really owed it to the man for sorting him out. Was this what having 'a bro' was like? Blake could never.

"And you'll quit the Fang?" Ichigo asked.

"Not a chance."

"Eh, worth a shot." Ichigo took his hand off his shoulder. "You're lucky you're just a scout. I came here with another huntsman, you know, but I ditched him when he called it a day. He'll probably try and lock you up, just a heads up if you see him."

"Noted."

Adam mentally re-wrote the general outline of his goals in his head.

Raze Atlas to the ground, Kill Cinder Fall eventually and save Blake for last. Perfect.

"Hey, uh, this might get kinda awkward... but the White Fang aren't the type to just kill loads of civilians, are they?" Ichigo scratched stiffly at the black-white neckguard he wore.

"Not really, no." Adam vouched. Technically he was telling the truth; that dust train convoy with Blake would've been the first time. They hadn't tried anything like that since, so therefore the only men he'd killed up until now had been SDC guards and Atlesian soldiers. "I've only killed people trying to do the same to me, so far."

"Same here." Ichigo raised a hand. "That's good. I'd have to take them all out if they were proper terrorists. You know, the kind that blow up airports and hijack trains and stuff."

Adam silently crossed out his more violent plans for the next month. It wouldn't do to have someone as strong as Ichigo on his back like that.

"Alright," Ichigo clapped his hands, "you got any more dust?"

Adam flicked a vial to him, which Ichigo caught with one hand. He rolled it through his fingers like a magician with a coin.

"Thanks. I know we said one room each, but let's just take a floor at a time. I'll start from the bottom, and you from the top."

And with that, Ichigo backflipped over the railing, diving right down to the ground floor.

"Tch. Try not to die." Adam wordlessly vowed to reach the ground before Ichigo reached the top floor.

Drawing Wilt and Blush, he set to work.

- –—{}—– -

The floor of the central hall was, in fact, not a floor at all. More of a swamp, actually. A swamp of pure, bright-green acid, from which many grimm-trees sprouted and— holycrapthatisamassivespider–

Ichigo ripped Zangetsu from his back, and frontflipped with it as he dived, bisecting the massive white spider and its red-woven web in one fell swoop without touching it. Just above the lake, he stopped himself, standing up on the air just over the corrosive glowing fluid.

His arrival caused a stir, and he heard a burst of flapping wingbeats behind himself.

Soon a cauldron of red-winged, black bats swarmed out, hissing and snapping with their white-masked heads and luminous red eyes. They looked to have exposed ribs on their chests, and were each about a foot from head to toe. He wasn't surprised by them; monstrous bats and spiders were hardly that weird when he'd already run into giant snakes and carnivorous plants today.

Ichigo sheathed Zangestu, as he popped the metal cap off of the vial of dust with his thumb, and poured it out into his left palm. Tossing the empty glass tube into the lake below, where it sizzled and dissolved, he freed up his hands to clap together. Rubbing them into each other, as he pulled his hands apart to reveal... whoa. Hadn't been expecting that.

His Quincy daitō crackled and shone in his arms. It was identical in appearance to his old Fullbring-Bankai sword, but the serrated blade was a bright, electric yellow that sparked wildly with thunderous lightning.

"Sick!" Right, the vial was yellow. It seems using the dust crystals made it far easier than just creating his Heilig Klinge from scratch, like combining his fullbring with it in his human body. He rolled his shoulders; he could work with this.

The bats surrounded him, swarming in a cloud of glinting fangs and attempted bites. Ichigo took a deep breath, then his arm blurred.

At an invisible speed, his lightning-sword speared, slashed and clipped bats all around his body, in a sphere of spark-trailed cutting swoops. Each touch of his Heilig Klinge left the grimm-bats a shocked husk that fell limp into the bubbling toxic pool below. In just a few seconds, the air was left clear, though the ambient static had Ichigo's hair almost standing on end.

He lowered his sword, only to immediately raise it again as soon as another of the massive spiders, this one with a legspan the size of his torso, leapt down from a branch above with a vicious hiss. He casually speared it right through, and immediately flared his reiatsu to blow it apart in a hail of lightning before it could slide down to the hilt and touch his hands. That would've been unpleasant.

The 'spiders' didn't really anatomically resemble an actual spider, apart from the eight white chitinous legs with red bristles, it didn't actually have a head, and its disturbing mouths were on its back and front instead, horrifying things that looked like a sinkhole for an orifice, lined with a ring of blood-red hooked fangs for teeth. Nasty.

With bugs like these, whatever fumigators got paid on Remnant, it wasn't enough.

He looked up, to spy Adam fending off more of the moving venus flytrap-looking jaws, Vennids, he'd called them, a few of the bats, and... was that a gorilla? Wild.

Adam, meanwhile, had watched as Ichigo acrobatically sliced through a Araknee's web, in such a way that he avoided touching the red silk at all.

Did he know the red webbing is poisonous, or was it just guesswork? From what he knew of the man so far, it was likely instinctual. He was leaping down whilst it happened, and landed before he could see any more of Ichigo's own landing strategy.

Adam entered a roll as he hit one of the walkways between one side of the mall's floors, and the other. The railings at this point in time were more of a guideline than a safety feature, as worn and broken down as they were, and that wasn't counting the portions of them that were covered with Venus thorn bushes and white nettle-leaves.

A trio of vines sprung at him, but they were swiftly beaten back by his flaming blade. Creeping Vennids joined the opposition, but blasts from Blush right into their dust-mutated jaws left them without heads to oppose with. As even a cauldron of Ravagers joined the fray, where most huntsmen would've been forced back and started looking for ways out, Adam pushed on, the swarm of bat-like grimm just dashing more fuel to his ecstasy of sword-fire.

Ichigo was right! This was the best way of going about this, by far.

Adam kept advancing, pushing the grimm back until he'd cleared the bridge, then leapt down onto a rusted escalator and began meeting everything that would challenge him head-on there, too. A Spadix was severed with a high horizontal cut at its stalk. A cloud of Ravagers was silenced with a thrown vial of explosive dust, detonated with a blast from Blush. A Vennid was slain with a quick upwards slash, splitting it up the middle. Adam's movements were tight, effective and very, very deadly.

With an enthused roar, he turned to face his next target. Adam grinned savagely. Finally, a challenge.

An Alpha Beringel was sizing him up.

It resembled a massive, three-meter-tall demonic Eastern gorilla, with a bone-mask for a face that matched the massively fanged skull of one. The osseous plates over its upper chest, hips and back were set in a black, shaggy coat of fur, with an uneven spread of smaller plates over its limbs and shoulders. Unlike a gorilla, it held itself up with its front palms against the ground, and a red pattern that resembled a vertical stylised eye spread across the white shards in its back. It rose upright on an opposite floor of the shopping centre, beating its barrel-chest to drum up an accelerating allegro of percussive force.

Adam met the cacophony by sheathing his sword, and crouching slightly whilst snaking his right foot back. The Beringel charged, leaping up from its floor and gripping the bark of a thick Venus Tree, before it leapt off and crashed heavily into the upper side of the broken escalator, cracking it further and shaking the rusted steps. As it rushed down the stairs, Adam looked up the stairway as he prepared to draw—

He leapt back, drawing Wilt not to attack, but to defend against a sudden stream of green acid from a Spadix. The stray corrosive spray ate away at the already-worn-down bridge.

With a grunt, he whipped blush off his waist to shoot off the interrupting annoyance. The Beringel took the opening, however, to close in, its vile red eyes taking up all of Adam's vision as it reared back a punch. He was still faster, raising Wilt to block with its flat edge, but he was pushed back by the heavy blow. The weight of the Beringel over the corroded spot made the bridge creak and buckle, and Adam almost lost his footing as he was on the lower side of the shaking staircase.

He raised his sword, aiming for an overhead strike, but the monster weaved left, gripping the weak rails and wrenching them off as it swung underneath the escalator. He paused, trying to guess where it was, but a punch right through the space under his feet answered that quickly. It grazed his leg, but aura buffered the blow and he refused to let the hit even get a grunt out of him. He scrambled up the stairs, another onyx fist punching though and ripping away more metal steps, dropping them to the toxic lake below, and he went with his instincts.

It wasn't purely a gut feeling as to where the Beringel was, but it was instinct that told him to act now. He speared Wilt right through the staircase floor, flaring the fire out from his dust-forged chokutō, and a screaming roar greeted his attack. In retaliation, the Beringel wrenched at the escalator from underneath, and what was about to happen briefly dawned on Adam as the creaks and groans of the metal staircase graduated to full-blown cracks and snaps.

The escalator collapsed under him with a resounding crash, leaving him in freefall with the Beringel beside Adam in the air. The beast snarled and hurled the torn-out step in its hands at the faunus, but he cut it in two in mid-air. He drew Blush, and shot it at the burned, thinned-out flank of the Beringel that glowed red just underneath its skin; the wound left by his sword.

It snarled and swiped at a close grimm-trunk, catching fast and sliding to a stop even as Adam did the same and stabbed Wilt deep into a stalk to slow his descent. His scorching blade sunk into the grimm-fibre, bringing him to a halt much further down than the Beringel had been.

He sought a foothold for few seconds, before accepting a hand from Ichigo.

"I'm going to–" –wait a minute– "–you!?"

"Me." Ichigo waved gingerly. "You fell pretty far down, y'know."

"Don't think I need help, I–"

"I don't." Ichigo sat down on a branch idly.

"What?" Adam shook his head, "–I mean, good. Of course you don't."

"I respect your strength." Ichigo kicked his sandalled feet back and forth, over the acrid pool of noxious acid beneath his toes. "I can tell you'd have killed it from the start if that first cut didn't get interrupted, or if you were on open ground. You use your sheathe to make your swings stronger, don't you?"

"You're surprisingly observant. It's a Mistralian art." Adam replied, ripping out his sword from the bark. He readied himself to climb back up the boughs of the grimm-stalk.

"You know your semblance?" Ichigo called. "Try keeping your sword covered in it, rather than just shooting it. Think of it like that sheathe. Trust me, give it a spin."

"Think of it like Blush?" Adam spoke consideringly, before jumping up onto the next branch he could reach. From there, an abandoned shop floor had caved through, which he clambered up inside to reach the next level. It lead out onto an overgrown walkway, and it wasn't long after stepping out onto it he locked eyes with the Beringels. Plural. There were four of them in total– two Alphas, including the one he'd burnt beforehand.

Instead of trepidation, however, Adam only felt eagerness. The hot adrenaline pumping through his veins was very firmly locked to 'fight', in his flight-or-fight response.

He broke into a sprint, faster and faster before jumping out into the open centre, as the Alpha Beringel he'd just squared off against did the same. This time, when he drew Wilt, there was no interruption as he swiped forwards, black-red lightning flickering across his body.

The grimm was cut in half at the chest, its lower and upper halves parting ways in the wake of Adam's strike. Where he landed in a roll on a bridge between floors, the split Beringel fell limp, the evil light leaving its eyes as it plummeted. There was no time to rest, however, as the two smaller, normal Beringels landed on either side of the bridge he stood on with a crunch.

He raised his blade, eyeing the constant thrum of crackling, flaring Moonslice enveloping Wilt, even as it faded from the rest of his body. It was somehow less draining to keep it there, than to fire it, he'd quickly discovered. The energy was slipping off of it, as he wasn't too used to keeping a grip on it, but it had massively amped his cutting power all the same. He'd only planned to use it for a first strike, then go back to normal, but if it was always like this... He should've tried this earlier...

Both Beringels charged at once, and Adam chose the one in front first. It tried a punch, so he sidestepped then severed the limb, but felt a huge hand grabbing at his leg from behind. A blast from Blush got the shadow-black limb to let go, and he kicked off of the broken hand on the floor to gain some time in the air. A flip over the just-shot Beringel behind him allowed for a slash at its back, the entire beast parting like butter, and he thrust through the gap to impale the other, one-armed one. It gripped at his arm, preventing any leverage for Adam to pull the pulsing red sword out, but an accidental twist of the blade took half the grimm's torso with it.

Adam froze a moment. There had been practically no resistance at all to his cut. Just a wrist movement; not even a full swing, and it still killed the beast. Had he been using his semblance wrong all this time? No, the ranged form was equally as strong, if not more so. He'd just missed out on what else was truly possible with it.

A howl from above had him leap back as the last, largest Alpha Beringel dove from above, driving a fist into the middle of the bridge so hard that the walkway caved in with the impact. Adam was left falling again, midair over the huge primate beast.

It made to grab at him, two chest-sized hands closing in from either side in mid-air, so Adam dived forwards and corkscrewed, cutting off both hands in a flaring semblance-powered whirl with a splatter of tar-like fluid. Left with an open chest, Adam could feel the last of his semblance's charge finally slipping away, so he decided now was the time.

Eyes on the neck, he drew.

"Moonslice."

The grimm was wiped away, and a few of the closer stalks crumpled and collapsed from the sudden gouges in their trunks. He used their collapsing boughs to break his fall, leaping off of them in the air to find firm footing by smashing though the dirty glass doors of a deserted shop. Outside, the grimm-plants plunged into the toxic lake with a din of tremendous splashes.

After a few moments, he stood up again, wiping the glass shards from his jacket, and sheathing Wilt at his hip with an affirming pat for a job well done. Leaning out from the broken shop window, he found Kurosaki... sitting on a tree branch, casually. The same tree branch. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but now...

"Were you just sitting there the whole time?"

"Yes?" Ichigo cocked his head. "Not my fault you just took so long."

"What've you been doing, then? I'm quite sure I reached the bottom first."

"Nope, not true." Ichigo shook his head. "Look around you. Notice anything missing?"

Adam looked searchingly, but came up short. There were only the few still-intact Creeping Venus trees, and Ichigo— Oh.

"You slew everything else here? In that same time?"

"Yep." Ichigo nodded, in a matter-of-fact way. "You should be happy, that one plant messed up your own fight, didn't it? I took care of them all after that." He seemed quite pleased with himself. "I think I win."

"Argh..." Adam grit out. "...Fine. I guess you won in a matter of speaking. But I still defeated the strongest opponents in the room." he quickly tacked on.

"Whatever you say." Ichigo laced his hands behind his horned head, his heterochromatic eyes shining with amusement.

"Now, we need to go deeper. We can cut the overgrown Venus shoots down here, as well." Adam dictated.

"Sure, I got a way around that." Ichigo climbed to his feet. "I'm gonna get rid of all the toxic gunk down there. Don't come down until it's clear."

Before Adam could ask how, Ichigo drew his sword from his back. Not the smaller, lightning-dust one he'd since dissipated, but his door-sized greatsword. The bandage unfurled, as Ichigo called out.

"Bleach, Zangetsu!"

An almost-liquid golden torrent of whirling energy swelled into a cyclone around him, aureate and warm in its ethereal sheen, before just as quickly as it welled up, it was wiped away with a whip of two contrasting swords. One dagger, night-black in its deep darkness, and a longsword with a hollowed-out centre, pure-white in its high brightness. Both keen-edged and held firm in his black-marked hands. Ichigo was sleeveless, having lost his neckguard as well, and now wore the porcelain-white cross with coral-red pauldrons, and white waistcloth with black patterning, that he'd worn when he and Adam Taurus had first met.

The display caught Adam off-guard, because he now realised that he hadn't felt any of what he'd just seen with his very own eyes, at all. It was uncanny.

Before he could open his mouth, however, Ichigo hopped down, pointing his swords down at the poisonous pool's sickly-green, luminous surface.

Instead of melting away, however, Ichigo just simply continued diving down, until he hit the actual bottom of the shopping centre. Below it, even, because it seemed that he'd stabbed his swords right into bedrock, the noxious liquid having long since eroded the floor of the building.

Ichigo was able to move that far because the acid seemed to just simply stop when it was near him. Not vaporise, or even flow away, but simply stop existing. Vanish entirely, in fact. He flared again, with a brilliant aura of gold, and the rest of the liquid soon evanesced all at once. Ichigo stood, sheathing his swords and admiring his handiwork, before looking up to the flabbergasted Adam from the dry swamp-bed.

"Well...?" he spread his arms out wide.

Adam was lost for words. "How did you..."

"Eh, it's not that crazy." Ichigo scratched at his cheek. "I did it to an entire ocean back when I got Zangetsu re-forged." he gestured to his split swords. They were obviously more than mere mecha-shift weapons, that much Adam could tell.

"...It doesn't matter." Adam shook himself out of his stupor from witnessing a literal miracle. "Just... let's go under."

"Hold on, lemme take care of the tree-things here, too." Ichigo strode up to the nearest Venus tree, and punched it. The fissures from his fist's impact raced up the white-flecked rough ebony bark, splintering it before collapsing in on itself entirely in a shower of dissolving splinters. Adam just watched, his expression numb as Ichigo went from car-sized trunk to car-sized trunk, knocking each one down with his bare hands.

"...And here's the last three." Ichigo spun round, walking back up to Adam cheerfully. "I'll let you have a go. How's my advice for your semblance work, again?"

"Well. Beyond expectations, as a matter of fact." Adam answered. "I'll need to absorb energy, mainly kinetic force to charge it, so..."

"You want me to punch it? Alright, just brace yourself..." Ichigo threw a straight, which Adam took head-on with the flat of his crimson blade. Since he was ready for it, his feet didn't budge, but the air itself shook with the impact. "Okay," he stepped back, "just try lining your blade with it, and keep it there. I do the same sort of thing with my own sword."

"Hm." Adam nodded at the strong red-black flare from Wilt, then turned to the clump of trees. He could try them one at a time, refining his control with each. Moonslice, as he knew, increased not just his attack's potency, but all of his physical attributes as well. It was an aura amplifier, in that way.

So this time, when he swung testingly, it only stood to reason that he broke the sound barrier. The cluster of Venus shoots were all simultaneously severed at once by the hypersonic cut, then disintegrated before they could even hit the ground. The white nettle-leaves fell in a drifting shower, finally casting down moonlight from the now-clear glass ceiling high above. Adam hadn't even fired this one, yet the air pressure alone still managed to gouge out the stone foundations he could now see exposed in the cut-through rock on the other side. He almost laughed at the sight. The havoc he could wreck with this...

"Not bad!" Ichigo snapped his fingers approvingly. "You can keep that stored up, right?"

"I don't think this will run out for a while." Adam ran his masked eyes over Wilt's edge, still seeping with more crackling power, before sheathing it.

"Great." Ichigo nodded, before slinging his white khyber longsword off his back and striking it into the ground, causing it to cave in a jagged line away from the duo. The hole he'd created with one hand was almost comically deep, and he returned his sword to his back like it was nothing. At this point, Adam wasn't even surprised.

He was the first to jump down into the depths of the mountain.

NEXT: 18 - THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM - [Encirclement Battle]

Author notes:

Fellow BleaCHADS, did you see the new TYBW Cour 2 trailer? BleachKINGS won so hard, I'm so hyped. There's so much new stuff holy crap. You say 'peak fiction' I hear 'Bleach'.

Alright, so the next two were supposed to be one big chapter, but the new KINO trailer dropped yesterday so I decided to just split it and drop the first half today. This might feel like it's a bit plot-light here, but I know a lot of people enjoyed seeing Adam and Ichigo interact, so I thought I'd let it go on for a bit longer. Adam is supposed to be a villain here, but Ichigo has no idea what he's thinking or referring to, so he's cool with him to a comical degree. I can't exactly let his personality do a 180° in one chapter, that'd be stupid. So therefore I just had Ichigo cure him of his yandere-simpdom before it can get too bad, and tip him to keep his semblance focused on his blade like Ichigo does with Getsuga Tenshō. That should be good for now, right?

This environment was really fun to write. An abandoned, overgrown shopping centre was an idea I came up with on the spot, and you can imagine it like those parts in the middle that are big and open with a load of escalators. You know those things? The Spadix is an offshoot of the Creeping Venus, based on the real-life Amorphophallus Titanum. Look it up, then imagine it all grimm-ified and neon-green to get your plant that shoots acid. Vennids are the flytraps. Ravagers are an actual canon bat-grimm, but the two-faced Araknee spider is also made up. They aren't really important though so you should be good.

Next chapter is very soon, in about a day or two, with the Michael-Bay tier climax to this arc and the BIG TWIST that I was talking about last time.

Thanks again for 440 reviews, 1082 favourites and 1457 follows!