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

If something terrible had happened on the surface of Mountain Glenn, then something downright horrific had taken place beneath it.

Ichigo had expected a cave system, or even just straight rock and dirt he'd have to tediously excavate through, but instead they'd found a huge, open cavern.

And not just a cavern; an entire subterranean branch of the city. There were deserted buildings, and cracked streets, and broken lights everywhere. It wasn't something Ichigo had expected at all. Was all this meant to be down here? Why would they build an entire town right underneath another one? Not only that, but...

There were skeletons down here. Human skeletons. Or faunus, he couldn't tell. They just kept on cropping up, their blackened, chipped bones telling of the grisly fate of the people they once were. Without the wind and rain of the surface to weather and bury them, the bodies underground were left exposed to the cavern air.

Ichigo's cheer died at the sight. Adam's too, though it was already subtle in his demeanour anyway.

"None of them were even buried..." Ichigo muttered as they wandered the empty streets. The glow of the malignant roots provided a minimal amount of light. It was more than enough for their eyes.

"There must not have been anyone left to bury them." Adam surmised darkly.

"How did they all... what were they all doing down here?" Ichigo glanced up, at the decaying buildings and cave roof. He could see the eerie shine of grimm roots pulsating with that soul dust-infused acid.

"Surviving. At least, they tried to." Adam gestured to what looked like a ruined storehouse as he spoke.

"You don't know what happened here? I'm surprised; it's public knowledge. For those unevacuated, and still trapped in the city, the citizens of Mountain Glenn fled underground, and shut themselves away in their subway system. They excavated further, and hastily built up a base it seems. In the end, when an explosion unleashed a cave system full of grimm upon the survivors, they didn't stand a chance. Vale deemed the settlement a lost cause, and sealed the tunnels leading from the kingdom to here, dooming them all."

Ichigo didn't know what to say. "They sealed them away? That's– that's so messed up. It's fucked."

He didn't usually swear so harshly, but this definitely excused the reaction.

Looking at the buildings closer, he could see how shoddily some of them were put together, even accounting for the passage of time. The roads were uneven, the camber all wonky and lumped up in some places. The 'streetlights' could hardly be called such; they were clearly not even rooted to the ground, and instead ran off of what appeared to be just spent dust-batteries.

It was barely even a town, and looked more like a ghetto with a sprinkling of the exposed bones of long-decayed denizens who'd perished in squalor.

"You're right. It is." Adam condemned with vindictive derision.

"Humankind discarding their own so easily... it's disgusting. All because the councils decided the economic resource costs and hiked taxes funding the ongoing rescue operation weren't sustainable for long enough. They claimed they'd done all they could. I doubt they even knew about the Leviathan-Class grimm under it all before they made their declaration, but it sure influenced their damning decision to never return. And it worked; after all this time, Mountain Glenn is an afterthought. Most men alive today weren't born when it fell. It's just something briefly brushed over in schools and used for political posturing."

Adam looked him in the eyes, behind his mask. "Ichigo, you said you're here to retake Mountain Glenn. Do they even deserve it back?"

Ichigo took took a few seconds to respond, but when he did, he stared squarely back at Adam, his sheer resolve tangible in his half lurid-yellow, half amber-brown irises. He wasn't smiling.

"...I'm here to save this city. It's not got anything to do with anyone in Vale today. It's for the people who were left behind here. Even if the living can forget this place, the dead sure can't. It's about letting them rest in peace, not just retaking it for the kingdom. I don't give a damn about who 'deserves' what."

Adam didn't know that the citizens of Mountain Glenn were still trapped inside the coffin of their dead city. He couldn't see ghosts and spirits; he hadn't met or seen the traumatised victims of the fall. Hadn't seen them break down and fall to pieces before his eyes. Maybe the people of Vale barely even cared after all this time, couldn't remember their dead sibling city, but Ichigo did. And that was all that mattered to him.

Adam gazed at him consideringly, then gave a shallow nod. It was... an interesting sentiment. It caught his more worldly, material perspective off guard, for sure. "Letting them rest? I didn't pin you as the religious type. Still, it's respectable, if anything."

With that said, he strode past him, Ichigo following up from behind.

The only animalian grimm underground were the Ravager-bats. They descended from their upside-down roosts high above in dense cauldrons, swarming the duo until Adam whirled Wilt overhead and cast a haze of flames to incinerate them all.

The rest were offshoots of the Creeping Venus; its thorns, vines, roots and stems. The flytrap-jaws and Spadixes sent their way weren't that much of challenge when they were toying with them beforehand; now, they were an afterthought with Ichigo and Adam's clear goal in tangible reach.

It wasn't long before they could see what they were gunning for.

The central bulb of the mutant Creeping Venus, where the roots met the stems, was so big they could see it from across the collapsed subterranean refuge. Over the sundered buildings, stood a pumping swell of fibrous grimm-matter, a ghost-white hide that encased the core of building-sized roots that extended up into the cavern's ceiling like a series of monstrous columns. It was so big that individual offshoots were the size of entire streets, uncanny vein-like networks of thrumming neon-green dust-fluid running along their surfaces, interspersed with black-white thorns. It looked almost demonic.

No wonder he couldn't find any lost souls down here, despite all the evidence of death; they were all in there.

It had to go.

"This is it, then. The root of the problem, literally." Ichigo announced. "Adam, I'm gonna drop us right onto it. Then we'll get cutting."

"We're supposed to cut it down?" Adam asked dubiously. "Can't you see how big it is? Just cutting down one part won't do any good; it'll eventually regrow. I've brought along high-explosive charges on me, for this very purpose."

"You're carrying bombs on you?" Ichigo muttered. "Weren't you trying to convince me you guys aren't terrorists?"

"You're right." Adam pointed a thumb at his chest. "I'm a liberator."

"Fine. I'll try it your way first, just... get on this thing." Ichigo held his hand out at the stone floor in front of them.

- –—{}—– -

The purple streak of reishi rocketed the duo over the net of thorned roots and spikes.

A vial of gravity dust, courtesy of Adam, had let Ichigo solidify his weaker copy of Uryū's platform that he'd seen him sometimes use to levitate. They shot over grasping tendrils, snapping flytraps and a bed of deadly spines, until they were just in front of the skyscraper-sized centre—

An enormous ebony root rose, ripping apart the soil and powdering buildings with its girth. It alone was the size of a Menos Grande, its toxic-green tipped thorns each as large as a car. Ichigo immediately dived off the platform, letting Adam whizz overhead, and drew the longer Zangetsu in an overhead slash. Where the blade length couldn't reach through it all, the air pressure of the slice alone did the rest. Soul-metal met grimm-tissue, and the root was severed instantly, the sudden loss of such a fundamental branch causing the rest of the street-choking roots to writhe and rise up.

Adam was left off-kilter by Ichigo's sudden departure, but took it as a cue to jump. He wasn't sure how Kurosaki could fly, since he refused to explain himself, but Adam wasn't complaining about it. He sailed high, well over ten meters, before his hands and feet caught the side of the central bulb. Scrambling up, he reached into his black jacket to draw out a chrome metal spike. It was engraved with the stylised snowflake of the Schnee Dust Company, with a crystalline dust charge inside. It was linked on a slack tungsten thread to another, and another, and another, the line of linked bomb-spikes extending up as he made his ascent.

Before he reached the top, however, a burble from within the bulb caught his attention. The thing knew where he was, somehow– the pressure, maybe?, and a fissure had opened up in the plant's hide in front of his chest. Not good. He narrowly let go on his right side, hanging to the left, as a high-pressure jet of acid-green fluid erupted in a corrosive geyser.

"Tsk." Adam almost reached for Wilt, but then considered that rupturing the building-sized plant bulb may just get his hand burned off by the fluids inside instead. He severed the wire for the bombs with a snap. A crackle of black-red lightning sparked across his body, and he tightened his grip before kicking up and flinging himself as high as he could go. Slingshotting all the way up the top of the Creeping Venus, he found himself in the air, but too far wide to re-grab the bulb. With a growl, he dived for the highest of the writhing tentacles, finding Ichigo about to sever that one too.

"Hold!" he shouted. But Ichigo had already brought his sword down, dropping the massive root. He couldn't tell how the man was surviving down there, but he was doing far more damage to the grimm than it was to him, it seemed. Adam landed with a long skid, stopping himself by dragging Wilt behind him in a gory line in the mostly-severed tendril.

"I needed that!" he snapped. "I need to get back up there, now!"

Ichigo glanced at him, then gazed off into the distance at the bulb measuringly. "Alright, I'll throw you."

"What? Don't piss around now!" Adam scowled.

"I'm serious." Ichigo retorted. "You saw how strong I am, right? If you think those bombs of yours will take care of it without destabilising the city above, then sure, I'll help. If that doesn't work, then... let me have a go at it. I'll sort this out."

"...Aim for the top." Adam grunted, as he crouched down. Ichigo lifted underneath his feet, squatting before swiftly standing and throwing his arms, and Adam, up in the air. As he raised his hands, he felt Adam kick off, the action fuelled by his overclocked semblance.

The wind whistled in his ears, over his dark horns, as Adam whizzed higher over the Leviathan-Class grimm's core, then he pulled out the rest of his string of bomb-spikes. He landed on top of the bulb with a slide, setting to work before he even stopped skidding. Spikes dug into the tough white exterior of the Creeping Venus, and he ran with the metal thread even as holes spouted deadly luminous-green vapour behind him. The hemisphere-shaped top of the colossal grimm was a good hundred meters in diameter, and he had about nine charges left, giving him an average of one about every eleven meters. He could cover that in seconds, even without his supercharged semblance, but with the sheer amount of lethality in the air, he didn't risk not using it.

First spike down, then a second. A spout of acid-steam almost caught him off-guard, and Ravagers snapped at him from the air, but he persevered and continued. Three, four–five–six–seven; his gloved palms allowed him to work fast despite the sweat on his fingers. A single fumble, and that was all it would take. As he was about to put down the eighth however, he realised something that gave him a precious moment's pause. There was an opening in the bulb. A ridge, had that always been there?

In a split-second decision, he stuffed the last three charges into the lip of the fissure– it looked to be a weak spot, and he had no time to mull it over.

With a deafening crack of thunder, he made it across the bulb, and dived down the other side, sliding down its rounded surface feet-first. He drew his sword, holding it over his head just in case, as he dropped off the side, and into free fall amid the contesting mess of writhing roots. He was forced to fight off more Ravagers as he fell, a spiral of flames encasing his dive to ward the bats off.

A hook of his blade slowed his descent with the severing of one man-sized branch, then another. A Spadix spewed acid at him, and without any way to redirect his momentum, he was forced to pull his sword in front of himself, setting it alight and boiling it away before it could reach him. The hot air was quickly passed through, but his aura protested at the abuse.

He saw his only chance at stopping himself with a thorny vine, thin enough to latch onto with one hand and at an incline that wouldn't just rip his arm off. He grabbed it, feeling the sharp spines lacerating through his left glove and grinding at his aura, but he grit his teeth and bared it. He was about to try swinging when—

A blur of black and white, then he was back on the ground, lying in— Ichigo's arms!?

An unceremonious bridal carry. He was dropped onto the dirty cave-floor without a word, and stood up, brushing himself off. "Not a word."

"No need to thank me." Ichigo waved off slyly. "So what now?"

"Just... watch the fireworks." Adam reached into his jacket, ignoring the new rips and tears he was sporting all over on his outfit, then pulled out a cylindrical trigger. It was made out of metal and white rubber, with a red button on top under a glass protector.

Breaking the glass in with a firm press, he pushed the button.

From the top of the Creeping Venus, a flower of crimson fire and flames blossomed with a raucous shockwave, one that engulfed the entire ceiling of the cavern, burning away at the roots digging into the roof of the cave, and eating away at the branches below it. They thrashed, almost in an animalistic way, yet the pure vermillion tongues of red-hot fire clung to them like a cloak of hot death.

"You're looking at an entire threadful of experimental SDC Napalm Dust Spikes." Adam proclaimed, almost proudly. The cherry-red blaze accentuated his voice.

"SDC?" The fire was pure, bright red... like Weiss's flames from Myrtenaster. Makes sense. This must be the highest quality of fire dust on Remnant at work. "So you stole it?"

"Repossessed." Adam corrected. "Whatever they would've done with it, this is a far more effective, and righteous, field-test. I for one, quite like the results."

Ichigo was about to answer when a large boulder from the cave roof above smashed into the ground to their left.

"I thought we were supposed to avoid destroying the city!" Ichigo yelled over the cacophony of the collapsing rockfall.

Adam hollered back. "It shouldn't! It's not a normal explosive! The shockwave is weak; it's only meant to spread the flames around!"

Ichigo's contrasting eyes widened. "Then it's not the bombs—"

A creaking, reverberating groan of fractured stone and ponderous grimm-plant matter cut him off. The flaming roots... they were moving, but not outwards. They were winding inwards, interweaving together like a gargantuan braid of bio-matter. This was underneath the narrowing bulb, which now had multiple, spiralling fissures that were clear to see, even from their distance. They pulsated, pumping their neon dust-fluid into the bulb like a floral heart.

"It's rising..." Ichigo realised aloud. Quite quickly, too, from the accelerating speed of the wrapping, burning roots.

"That thing... I saw it when I landed on it from above." Adam ascertained. "It's not just a bulb, it's a dormant flowerbulb. Whatever happens when it blooms, we cannot allow to pass." he declared. "This is beyond matters of man and faunus, now. The Creeping Venus must know its about to die. You know what means, for plants? I don't know how that dust Merlot Industries imbued it with has affected it, but if it's some form of seed or spore dispersal..."

"Got it." Ichigo nodded. "We're doing this my way, now. No more holding back, I'm cutting it down. But first, there's something inside the bulb head. A massive crystal of that dust..."

"What about it?" Adam raised an eyebrow.

"We can't let that stuff get blown everywhere. You see what it can do?" He gestured to the still-rising titanic plant. "We gotta extract the crystal."

Also, hitting it as hard as he was about to would probably wipe out all of the souls he could sense still trapped inside it, but Adam didn't know that. Ichigo had been wondering why there weren't any crystals in the roots he'd severed to check, and now it was clear that they were all concentrated in one area. He would've just cut it down on sight from the start, otherwise.

"You have a plan, I assume?"

Ichigo cocked his head. "I thought I just told you, dumbass? We yank out the dust crystal first, then we go ahead and chop the tree down."

Adam actually laughed at that. A ugly, clipped, grim laugh, but it was a laugh. "...Yes... I'll admit it's better than nothing."

The crow flapped over the fallen city, its red eyes searching the rainy streets for any sign of orange hair.

Instead, it found a violent remnantquake, followed by the catastrophic emergence of a flaming Leviathan-Class Creeping Venus, rupturing the ground as it ascended up from the centre of Mountain Glenn like a germinating volcano.

The crow dived in at once, but as it approached it caught sight of exactly what it was searching for beforehand at last; Ichigo Kurosaki was jumping up the burning stalk, followed by— someone else? It knew he hadn't actually left the city like he'd claimed. Of course, now it really wished he had.

Ichigo, with a sureness far too specific to be a coincidence, locked onto the crow as it flew in to land.

"Oh hey!" he greeted loudly over the absolute din around them. "Qrow!"

The man next to him looked confused at Kurosaki greeting a bird that was for some ungodly reason approaching the city-destroying monster plant, and the corvid almost visibly fell out of the air at apparently getting exposed. Before it could falter too hard in flight, however, it shifted and grew with an obscuring cloud of sable-black feathers, which were quickly beaten down by the heavy rainfall.

In its place was now a man with spiky black hair, chin-stubble, a raised hood and wild, deranged red eyes. He landed on the sturdy lorry-sized smouldering branch, marched right up to Ichigo, and grabbed him by the kosode with both hands, the dark fabric bunching up under his manic grip. He didn't even bother questioning how Ichigo had known it was him; he had bigger fish to fry now.

"What the heck did you do!?" Qrow said, calmly.

"How could you tell who it was?" Adam asked at a complete loss. The list of things he'd borne witness to today just kept getting weirder and weirder.

"Oh, that's simple." Ichigo waved off, even as Qrow tried shaking him back and forth. He quickly found the ginger wouldn't budge an inch. "I know a lady who turns into a cat. His human aura matched up with the bird's. I didn't know you could have two semblances, Qrow? Uh, Qrow?"

"I said, what the hell did you do!?" Qrow screamed. "You disappear for two hours—two hours!—and this is what happens!?"

"Cool off, jackass." Ichigo slapped away his hands. "You wigging out ain't doing us any favours here." he gestured to the skyscraper-sized grimm's trunk behind him. "We've got a bigger problem to deal with than just playing the blame game."

"Ah, Ichigo? Can you really blame him for reacting this way? I don't really know if you're in a position to be reprimanding him right now."

"Of course I'm not." Ichigo rolled his mismatched eyes. "I'm just telling Qrow off before he can tell me off. That's how these things work, in my experience."

"You do realise you're saying all this right in front of me?" Qrow retorted. "Now, can you please tell me what the hell is going on— Why is the dormant Creeping Venus under Mountain Glenn about to bloom its Rafflezilla here? Why is it glowing? —And is that Adam Taurus right there!?" he cried.

"Hold on... You're Qrow Branwen?" Adam realised, immediately placing a hand on Wilt at his side.

"Oh, you two know each other?" Ichigo commented in surprise, a hand on his chin. "That's nice. Adam, Qrow is the huntsman I told you about earlier. And Qrow, I just found Adam wandering around. We went around Vale, exterminating everything we could find. After that, we just went underground and found that." He jerked a thumb up at the towering plant's head. By now, it had risen to silhouette itself against the shattered crescent moon in the sky. "It's an experiment of fusing grimm with dust by some place called Merlot Industries decades ago. We've gotta remove the dust crystal, then we're taking it down. Okay?"

"Okay!? Okay...? —Okay." Qrow repeated, then breathed deeply, then reached almost therapeutically for the not-so-therapeutic flask of strong alcohol on his hip-pouch. He gulped once, twice, then thrice, and when it didn't look like it was going to stop he paused for air.

"—Uh, are you sure you should be drinking right now?" Ichigo asked bluntly.

"Yes." Qrow went back to it, and didn't stop until he finished the flask. He tossed it over his shoulder, hundreds of meters down to the city streets below.

"Oh, right." Ichigo smacked a fist down into his palm confidently. "I know! It's probably got something to do with your abilities, right? You some sort of drunken master?"

"It gives me the ability to not go insane after one afternoon with you." Qrow replied dryly.

"Uhm," Adam coughed into his fist. "Gentlemen? We still have a situation on our hands." he pointed above. They could make out the petals blossoming out from the flower head.

"It's alright." Ichigo bent his knees, as a cue to jump. "We would've had to open it up to get the crystal, anyway. It's why we stopped to talk. It'll only take us a few jumps to get up there. Qrow, you got any rope?"

"I've got metal-dust wire?" Qrow answered alternatively.

"Then follow us. We'll wing it." Before Qrow could protest, they were off. With a curse, he followed, leaping up to the next outcropped branch overhead.

They reached the top in three bounds, and witnessed the almost-fully opened flower of the behemoth Creeping Venus blossom. The pouring rain had put out the dust-fire, leaving it visible in all its unholy glory. The moonlight was brightest up here, silhouetting them against the crescentiform lunar backdrop.

There were only five flat, curved petals, each as massive as a house, all of them black with white circle-shaped polka-dots of varying sizes. The middle was a swollen ring of the same colour, forming an almost perfect-circle around an absolutely-gargantuan, hill-sized crystal shard of glowing, neon-green soul dust like an organic lighthouse. Ichigo could almost hear the sheer amount of lost spirits trapped inside of it.

"Alright!" he called through the roaring winds, lashing rain and claps of rolling thunder. "I'm gonna kick it off! You guys control the fall with wires wrapped around it, and I'll slow it down!"

Adam and Qrow seemed as though they were about to say something, but didn't; both had witnessed Ichigo's considerable strength by now, so they knew he meant what he was saying. As they both nodded in mid-air, Ichigo set to work.

An uncountable tangle of snapping, biting Vennids set upon them as they landed, vines reaching up from the main stalk. They were immediately cut down by dual aura slashes of streaking crimson, from both Adam and Qrow working in unison, as Ichigo touched down and entered a superluminal sprint that left a bang of collapsing wet air in his afterimage-filled wake.

He jumped, and tilted back to bring his feet up first as he fly-kicked the colossal luminous gemstone. The sheer strength of the impact wrenched it up and out from the hole it was embedded in, and Ichigo caught a glimpse of the flower without its centre. Inside the hole, were spikes of acid-green thorns, and a mess of curled-up black barbs.

The barbs unfurled, coated with white bristles slavered in the noxious, nose-burning neon acid. They reached out to snare back the crystal, over thirty at once, but Adam spotted their ploy in time.

"Moonslice."

A thin, controlled horizontal blade of pure reiatsu instantly severed all of the Sundew-like stalks, letting them fall back into the death-trap that made up the central pit of the Rafflezilla flower.

"Now!" Qrow shouted, as he tossed a dust-wire dispenser linked to his own spool to Adam Taurus. He wasn't stupid; he knew how to prioritise, and as ridiculous as finding a man as notorious as Adam Taurus by accident was, he wasn't about to fight him over stopping a godsdamn Venus bloom anywhere near the kingdom of Vale's walls. Luckily, it seemed Taurus had that sort of sense to him as well.

Adam caught the metal spool dispenser, and flexed his semblance again as he caught it. All this had taken place in the few fleeting seconds the crystal was still carried by Ichigo kicking it, the raindrops almost still in comparison to his lightning-fast speed. He knew what he had to do; Qrow could tell his overclocked semblance was faster than him, and he expected Adam to be the one to tie up the gemstone whilst he controlled it from behind.

Using the little time he had, he zipped under, then flipped over the shard in a blur, his muscles almost spasming, seizing up from the extreme strain he was putting them through. Good. This would only serve as training to grow faster, next time.

The borrowed mechanism in his hands wove together the expensive bright-orange powder into a hair-thin, flexible stand of one of the strongest substances native to Remnant. Metal dust wound around and around the uneven faces of the massive gem, gunmetal lines contrasting against its effulgent hue as Adam made his mark.

When Ichigo took his leg off of the crystal and allowed it to start falling, the shining, dripping lines of metal-dust wrapped around it pulled taught in a matter of moments. Qrow dug his heels in even as he slid to the edge of the petal, using all his strength on the enormous gemstone to slow its drop even a little. It wasn't completely enough, and a writhing horde of flytraps and barbed vines closed in on him from behind, before Ichigo flickered into place at his back and wiped them away with a swing of his hollow longsword.

"You think you can make it down yourself?" he called back.

"I can turn into a bird, Itch." Qrow grunted.

"Alright, just make sure you fall with it. We can't let this thing shatter." Ichigo leaned back, diving off the skyscraper-high flower's edge. Adam followed, jumping onto the plummeting crystal, riding it with a flaming Wilt in hand to ward off the chasing vines. Qrow clenched the wire dispenser with his teeth, shifting into his corvid form with a flutter of rain-beaten sable feathers.

He dove straight down, weaving the all the dust still in the spool into a tangling line through the stalk's branches that glimmered in the moonlight and flickering thunder. Eventually, it ran out, and he let go immediately before the tug could yank his beak off. A few seconds in returning to human form were enough to line up a shotgun blast on the end of the line, to try and prevent its unravelling.

"Hrk!" he hadn't enough time to properly fire off enough; a cracked, uneven ball of stone grew from his target sites, but it wasn't anything substantial enough. He was out, and— another two dark orange vials were suddenly thrown from atop the crystal. Adam Taurus; he'd given him another shot, and he couldn't waste it. It seemed the man didn't carry pre-prepared explosives, it must've been stolen–figures– but he couldn't nitpick now. Lining up Harbinger's twin barrels, the flash from the muzzle set off a chain reaction.

With a rough series of cracks that sounded like a tectonic plate's coughing fit, the hasty wire network was embedded in a sudden wall of stone on the side of the massive white stalk. It forced the crystal's fall to slow and swing in, towards the braided stalk, and it almost hit it, before Ichigo fell far enough to get in-between the glowing building-sized gem and block its impact.

Though he was more than strong enough to catch the huge dust shard, getting a proper grip on it was another issue entirely. That was why Ichigo needed its fall to be controlled, so that he could— there!

Ichigo was underneath it now, standing on a visible platform of azure reishi as deep lines and fissures grew in the temporary rock anchor for the oversized shard. His waistcloth flapped up as he made his descent. Okay, now for...

Ethereal blue lines extended from his hands, which weren't so much gripping as pushing against the smooth, handhold-less vitric surface. That would be too risky to bring down; it would just slip out of balance at any moment, so he had to try something new. The lines followed the metal dust tied around the gemstone, using the forged reishi as guidelines rather than fuel. He could somehow tell that he couldn't draw on the dust-metal, but didn't dwell on it as the blue lines coalesced and condensed into smoky, blue-black chains, like it had in Beacon's initiation.

"Cut the line!" Ichigo yelled at the top of his lungs.

Adam clocked up at the steady breaks making their way through the slate-grey stone anchor, and acted without hesitation. Standing on his perch atop the chained crystal, he swung, hard, with both hands at the taught line, his blazing sword hissing with a trail of steam under the heavy weather. He used yet more of his semblance here, running dangerously low now, seeing as it was metal dust he had to cut now.

In the back of his mind, he knew Ichigo was banking on that platform of his that could fly, and his own borderline-mythic strength. Would it be enough? Adam didn't know. But he did know that even if his fellow faunus failed, he could still jump off and catch a branch on the way down before he died on impact.

The crow to his side let out a disapproving caw even as the crystal descended again, but the new slowness, the clear control behind it this time stilled their nerves. Idly, Adam mused on just how ridiculous a man turning into a bird was, as he side-eyed Qrow behind his mask, but after an afternoon with Ichigo he couldn't muster enough will to properly confused by it at this point. Maybe afterwards.

Almost two-hundred-and-fifty meters they fell, the rocks from above finally giving away somewhat as they pelted down, battered away from their soul-charged cargo by Adam's Wilt and Blush.

Adam made a point of hopping off just before they touched down, leaving Ichigo to bear the burden of landing all by himself. The White Fang agent landed with a roll, stopping himself with a hand to the wet, ruptured asphalt. "Hrm!" Ichigo was next, landing with a grunt and dropping the gemstone from his hands with a loud crunch. Qrow swooped in, shifting back into a human with a look to him like he was high on adrenaline and more.

Their utter lack of a plan had worked out just fine in the end, thanks to everyone there being more than sufficiently skilled, experienced and quick-witted to adapt on the fly. They weren't mere trainees. They were some of the best Remnant had to offer. It wasn't a miracle that it worked, thanks to all that, but it still sure felt like one.

"Nice work." the older man grinned despite himself, as Ichigo stretched his arms out and Adam stood up fully. "...Now what about that?"

Ichigo stepped up, confidently striding out in front of the two. He smoothly drew both his swords, the white blade from his back, and the black dagger from his side.

"Leave it to me. I think it's time to open the taps a little."

"What could you even do? We haven't got much time before the Venus Bloom."

"Just trust me. I'll end this, in an instant."

Qrow looked searchingly at him before his attention was ripped away by the screech of an approaching Griffon.

"Go take care of the pest control around us," Ichigo directed. "It's not going anywhere, is it? Me and Adam will handle the weed."

"Me and you?" Adam asked, as Qrow dashed into the fray.

Ichigo paused, then seemed to decide on something. "Yeah. Guess I changed my mind. You can help out, too. You know you said your semblance takes in energy, right? Ever tested just how much?"

"I've never reached a limit." Adam replied, taking the clue and raising Wilt with both hands on the hilt in a defensive stance.

"Well, let's test that out, then."

Ichigo blurred, and before Adam could even blink, he was at his throat. Adam couldn't even swallow, nor blink, and he only realised he'd forgotten to keep breathing when his chest started to hurt. Both of Zangetsu were touching Wilt, just barely, as if that was all he could afford to do without breaking Wilt entirely. As annoying as it was, from the shocked feeling in his arms, that was probably the case. Just a touch, and he could feel his semblance positively burning like never before in his life.

He could feel it buzzing under his skin. Involuntarily it was leaking out, as huge arcs of red-black lightning. He could feel his hair standing on end, and the world itself slowed—

But not Kurosaki.

Ichigo moved at his normal speed, always just out of reach, of everything in the world. Like he was above it all.

It was off-putting, inhuman. But that was fine with Adam. He hated humans, after all.

Cinder was like that too, from the start with her strength and speed, and after she had returned that day before Blake left, with her flames of magic and sorcery over the elements. He despised her for it. How she flaunted her monstrous power, and used it to bend him and his men to her will on threat of death. He despised her. Loathed the witch with all his heart.

But Ichigo, he was different. Even though he was stronger, someone who he could tell was stronger than even Cinder, Adam didn't hate him. Ichigo was someone who spoke with him as an equal, who criticised him, but allowed Adam to get angry, to criticise right back, to his face.

That was better than even Ghira Belladonna had been to him. Ichigo didn't talk down to him like the old leader, and that meant a lot. He taught him, lent his power, and tried to cheer him up over Blake. He inspired him to leave her behind, and focus on his true calling of exterminating humanity, properly.

He felt better, thanks to meeting him. More focused, and self-aware.

"We strike all at once, y'got it?"

So when Ichigo grinned eagerly, with a savage edge to his teeth, Adam matched it.

He marched up to his side, and fell into a stance. It wasn't one he used often, but maybe he should? Mixing, testing, experimenting, was how he'd grow. More skill, more power. All for the Fang, and all for himself. And the two were one and the same, weren't they?

Ichigo eyed the massive, blooming form of the Creeping Venus. Something was building its way up the braided stem; a neon-green bulge was rising. That couldn't be good, whatever it was. The Bloom Qrow was fretting over, probably. It was fast approaching its flower, the Rafflezilla.

The name, funnily enough, reminded him of Earth's largest flower, and after seeing that freshly-opened monstrosity, the resemblance was clear as day. Another quirk, a strange coincidence across worlds, he supposed. It didn't matter. Not when it was finally time to finish this.

Adam held Wilt, sheathed in Blush at his leftwards hip with both hands. He was going to rely on its automatic inner mechanisms to unsheathe it without even touching the scabbard. Bending his knees, a new name came to mind for what he was about to attempt as black-red lightning visibly sparked across his body with increasing frequency.

Ichigo held Zangetsu at his sides, alternate to the crossed arms holding them, pointing down. His waistcloth whipped up, billowing behind him as black-white reiatsu flared up from his swords, and seeped from his body. He seethed with power, transcendent and visible in the stormy air. A flash of forked lightning in the clouds above revealed the skull in his shadow, but was made invisible again a fraction of a second later with the roil of tumultuous thunder.

The malignant bulge inside the Creeping Venus reached its flower—

"Getsuga..."

"Moonslice..."

They struck.

"–Jūjishō!"

"–Red Fang!"

Once Ichigo ripped his swords through the air, across the Ōken armour on his chest, up over his shoulders, and Adam drew Wilt with both hands and all his strength, from his left hip, to his chest to over his right shoulder, the world turned white.

A mile-high tsunami of sharp, lethal spiritual energy burst forth, the white-black cross of the Getsuga Jūjishō dyed with the red swirl of the Moonslice Red Fang melded into a crescendo of cataclysmic power. The sound alone was a deafening, catastrophic crash that was so loud, it had pedestrians in the far-off kingdom of Vale stopping in their tracks in the nighttime streets. The sheer force behind it ripped the skyscraper-sized plant from its gargantuan roots, and its scathing spiritual pressure wiped the grimm-matter target from existence entirely.

The Creeping Venus was torn up, flung into the sky, where it was burned away on a spiritual level. Gale-force winds blew away anything left unvaporised from the epicentre of the light-speed blast. The storm clouds were scattered and blown apart, as the attack sailed off into the stratosphere, then further, and further beyond to crest the vacuum of space. If Remnant had satellites, the strike would have been visible from orbit.

The stars were out. The rain had instantly stopped, and the stellar-speckled, purple-orange dawn sky was clear. Qrow brought his forearm down from shielding his eyes, then let out a shaking, breathy sigh as he realised the magnitude of what the two just did. The atmospheric weather pattern had been completely cast apart by their attack.

There was nothing left. Nothing of the Leviathan-Class creature of grimm survived their swords. What little remained of the charred shards were quickly dissolving in the wind, leaving the three of them in the quickly-warming town square, looking down into a cavernous hole poked through the city.

Qrow wanted to laugh, but he also wanted to just slide down and sit for a while with a bottle instead. Instead, he stayed on his feet, immediately assessing the situation.

Adam Taurus did laugh. He laughed out loud, a strong sound full of pride, even as his aura crackled and fizzled. He was on the fritz, one good hit would break it, and his arms looked completely limp. Though the rain had stopped, they were all still completely drenched, but Adam was steaming. The water was literally evaporating from his skin, as he leaned on Wilt with its tip sunk into the ground.

Qrow, saw his chance, and drew Harbinger on the international terrorist. The bounty on the man was one of the highest in the world, and he'd be claiming it tonight. It was only fair, after the sheer insanity of today.

"Adam Taurus. Drop your weapon."

Adam snorted, then spat to his side, standing up wobbly. He should have seen this coming, but he'd been too overeager, too brash and overconfident in fully flexing his power. That new attack made him feel invincible, like he was the strongest alive... but now, he was paying the price. He held Wilt with both hands, even as his vision swam and his head spun.

"Make me."

Qrow Branwen stepped forwards—

"Whoa, hold on."

"Itch?" he stopped and hitched an eyebrow questioningly.

Ichigo was standing in front of him, with his back facing Adam, between them both. His hand was on Harbinger's blade, clasping the cool metal of the mecha-shift sword between his firm fingers.

Both were shocked. He didn't even look tired, at all. He was the picture of health; relaxed, swords casually sheathed, standing tall, as if parting the very sky was as easy as breathing for him.

"Ichigo, get out of the way. He's literally a wanted terrorist."

"Yeah, I know." he nodded.

"You know? So..." he gestured with his free hand. "Y'know, lemme do my job? I'm not gonna kill him, if you're worried about that."

"Yeah, but I still don't appreciate you waving a sword at someone who can barely stay on his own two feet. We've gotta take care of that crystal now, so you guys can square off once we've got everything else finished with."

Adam was speechless.

Ichigo was... defending him? Even if he didn't know who he really was, he knew more than enough to surmise the kind of man he was protecting, here. Against a legal huntsman, against Qrow godsdamn Branwen, no less. Ichigo was...

Ichigo was... a friend?

Adam decided that he was, then and there.

Probably the best one he ever had, which wasn't saying much.

Oblivious to the existential crisis going on behind him, Ichigo let go of Harbinger's sharp edge, getting an annoyed huff out of Qrow. He stalked up to the crystal, whipping out his shorter Quincy dagger from his hip, and stabbed it right into the solid gemstone's lit face before anyone could protest.

The reaction was immediate.

He could feel the cage of reishi that the crystal represented, and he broke the hold it had over the souls within, scrambling its structure and rendering it inert all at once. A column of white-green light erupted into the star-studded sky, and Ichigo pulled his dark shortsword out, sheathing it with a flourish.

Souls, he could feel them, their spiritual flames, and see their ethereal, incorporeal forms flying up, into the purple sky, all fading away at once like a glimmering shoal with golden-yellow halos on their heads. With the Leviathan-Class grimm slain, it seemed that whatever was chaining their attachment to this plane was severed as well– no konsō necessary. He closed his eyes, pulsing a pequisa to find that any other spiritual flames were also fading, leaving this plane of existence entirely and moving on.

He smiled, and opened his eyes, raising his horned head to the violet early morning sky as the sun began to peak over the orange-red horizon of the ruined city. A new dawn had risen on Mountain Glenn.

The column of spiritual light and souls, invisible to all but him, died down, and the crystal's luminous lustre died down to a dull transparent sheen.

"What did you do?" Qrow pressed, as the shinigami turned to face them.

"I neutralised it." Ichigo patted the crystal wall beside him. "This thing won't be doing anything like that, again. You can take it back to Beacon to analyse it, too."

"And how exactly are we supposed to take it back?" Qrow asked flatly.

"Dunno." Ichigo shrugged. "Not my problem. Mountain Glenn is saved, and laid to rest. There aren't any grimm left in the city. If you excuse me, I'll be taking that reward, now. It was a couple million lien, right?" he smirked.

As shuttering-click was heard, and he looked over to find Adam Taurus holding a scroll.

"Did you just... take a photo?" Ichigo stared at Adam dryly with narrowed eyes.

"For reporting purposes. I am a scout, after all." he replied shamelessly.

"Yeah... I'm gonna need that—" Qrow stepped up to Adam, but Ichigo whizzed in front of him again.

"Seriously, Itch!?"

"Yeah, uh, you know my portals?" he swiped his hand at the air to his right, fingers dragging a descorrer to pull back the fabric of reality itself like a curtain, revealing an extra-dimensional portal to the garganta beyond.

"Your portals!?" Adam's jaw fell slack.

"Yeah, uh—jump in!" he whispered aggressively to Adam, who stood rooted in place. Ichigo's hands pushed on the small of his back, sliding him slowly towards the garganta. "C'mon!"

"Absolutely not, you madman!" Adam whisper-shouted back.

"Wait, is that something in there!?" Qrow pointed inside the jaggedly right-angled hole in space-time.

Ichigo froze, stock-still. Had he heard that right? "What?"

"Yeah, look." Ichigo switched to face the portal, and now was the first time either of the others had seen him truly thrown off.

"See?" Qrow grilled. "I thought I saw something flying inside it last time, and turns out I was right. Is it supposed to be in there? It kinda looks like a—"

Ichigo grabbed both ends of the portal, and yanked it shut from both sides with a pale face.

"Yeah, just, uh—"

"What is that!?" he demanded.

"Magic."

"That is not an explanation!"

"Yes, it is."

"Well, it's not enough of one!"

"It's a portal. I can, uh, make those? I really gotta go, man, so see ya guys."

"Go where?"

"Go... up?"

"Up?"

"Yes, up. You're welcome, by the way. See ya!" Ichigo gave a two-fingered salute, then jumped hard enough to bluster up a small whirlwind. He left a dumbfounded Qrow behind.

The older man groaned out loud, and facepalmed with an audible smack when he realised that Adam had taken the distraction to use the last of his aura to already escape. If he'd run out of aura now, then Qrow wouldn't be able to sense him.

Dammit.

Even his flask was gone.

Ichigo's waistcloth flapped around him as he ascended like a rocket.

He kept going, shunpo after sonído, not caring whatsoever about whatever Qrow had seen him do. Not as if it mattered. Ichigo didn't care about hiding his abilities beyond the hassle of follow-up questions, anyway.

What he did care about, was waiting for him, inside the garganta.

He stopped somewhere on the edge of space, the blue marble of Remnant's globe stretching out underneath him, and the dark blanket of stars above him. The flight had dried the rainwater off. Standing on an unseen platform of reishi, he took in the continents he could see; Sanus in the middle, and Atlas to the North. The rest was obscured by the curvature of the planet. He'd crossed light-years in hours before with his True Shikai, so a few hundred kilometres in seconds wasn't anything taxing for him.

He reached out, tapping at the unseen, pulling back the curtain to find what lies behind reality. The garganta opened with a sound like a scrambled zip, right angles unfurling like an unpressed accordion, revealing the swirling hyperspace beyond. Ichigo stepped through the portal, to find what had completely taken him off guard back on the surface.

A Hell Butterfly.

It was fluttering all alone in the void, graceful, hand-sized and black. The lower half of its wingtips had a pinkish-red outline to it, as it flapped in circles.

It was holding a Denreishinki Soul Phone in its legs.

Ichigo reached out an open palm, and let the butterfly drop the closed flip-phone in his hand. It flew up to his shoulder, then landed there. He felt kinda bad for it, given how he had no idea how long it must have been waiting for him, fluttering all alone in the dark. He should take care of it; it could come in handy in the future.

In his hands, he opened the flip phone. It made him feel vaguely nostalgic for when he was a kid in the early 2000s, as he opened it carefully, and switched it on. It was silver, shaped like two thin chrome antenna-less rectangles together, with buttons and a pad on the bottom and a bezel-less touchscreen on top. The resolution was surprisingly good, as good as his smartphone even, contrasting its sleek retro aesthetic. He already knew how to use one, so he quickly navigated the menus and found that Kisuke Urahara's number was already saved as a contact.

That settled it, then; this was sent for Ichigo specifically.

He pressed call.

It rung for three seconds, before with a click, it was answered.

#"...Ichigo?"#

"Kisuke?"

#"Hahaha! It's good to hear you're alive and well! I won the bet!"#

"You took bets!?"

#"Relax, Ichigo~ I bet on your side, didn't I?"#

Ichigo didn't relax. He could hear Hat-n'-clog's stupid fan opening to hide his damn smile.

#"You haven't just been trapped in the garganta for a week, have you? I was almost worried that you'd been cast into Hell..."#

"Nope, not Hell. I wound up on a normal-ish plane, actually. More normal than Hueco Mundo, even. It's got people, and everything. I've got a place to stay."

#"That's good. I'm relieved..."# And Urahara really sounded it. #"I'd love to hear about it, –some other time. You kind of called at an, hum, inopportune time, I'd say."#

"Inopportune? What kinda shady crap are you up to this time?"

#"Official Gotei business."#

Ichigo snorted, and made sure Urahara heard it.

#"I'm dead serious."#

And from the tone in his voice, Ichigo knew he was. He frowned. That wasn't a good sign.

#"Listen, if you have somewhere to stay, then stay there. Don't come back just yet."#

"What? How comes?"

#"Not forever, just lay low."# Urahara clarified. #"It's about the vacant throne of the Soul King."#

Ichigo's half-hollow eyes widened at what that meant.

"Oh... oh, shit."

#"I told you so, Ichigo Kurosaki."#

It took a good few seconds for his mind to reel at the smug, monotone, even, polite voice he'd just heard over the line.

"Is that freaking Aizen!?"

NEXT: 19 - CALLING HOME - [Creeping Shadows]

Author notes:

*Vine boom* Are you surprised? I hope so. This concludes the Mountain Glenn arc. The Creeping Venus's flower is a monstrous version of the IRL largest flower, the Rafflesia, plus a big stalk. For the music, I'd say you should probably stop it around the part where the action stops. I usually try and pick a track that suits the entire chapter, but I really wanted to use Encirclement Battle here. It's really climactic.

So, SIGMAizen's back in the story. What does that mean? Find out next time. Before you go crazy, he's still staying in jail. You know, one guy in the reviews pointed out Qrow noticing the thing flying in the garganta in chapter 15, so congrats to Loulloko. It's not gonna be a lore dump, more of an update on the other side, told through a phone-call instead. This story will stay only on Remnant, don't worry. Just bear with me here.

Hope the climax was up to snuff. This wraps up Ichigo's, Adam's and Qrow's wild ride. How this shall affect things will be seen later. Ichigo learns some pretty ugly stuff, but more importantly, Adam's got a friend! How nice for him, shame he still wants pretty villainous things though. At least he's happier...? Ichigo probably wouldn't have protected him from Qrow if he'd actually known what he wants. Or maybe he would have, I don't know, he's friends with freaking Kenpachi, after all.

Ichigo actually swears in this chapter, something I saved for things that really deserve it. What happened in Mountain Glenn really does, honestly. It's not OOC, since in the manga and TYBW anime characters swear all the time, too. A perk of no censorship, I guess. I'll keep it very rare though, for impact and to avoid edgecringe.

The next cour of the TYBW drops on the 8th of July. I've gotta revise, because I've got a paper this Monday too, so I won't be starting on the next chapter until everything's over. I guess you can call this chapter the end of Volume 1, but Ichigo's completely broken canon by now, so it's not saying much. Hopefully this cliffhanger gives you a lot to imagine up until then.

Thanks for breaking 1500 follows! And also, 1,100+ favourites, too. I've read all 466 reviews, and appreciate all your feedback a ton.

See you once BLEACH returns to save anime.