Companionship of the Strangest Variety

By Quick-n-Popular

Disclaimer: "Bleach" and all its characters are properties of Tite Kubo-sama. I own only the characters I create for the purpose of telling this story.

Chapter One: One really bad day

Ichigo Kurosaki, age fifteen, was having a bad day, today. Just before his usual start of the day, he had found some skater punks who had knocked over a little girl's memorial offering in the place where she had died. Sure, it was an honest mistake on their part, but their carelessness and attitude disregarding what they had done enraged Ichigo. After of fifteen minutes of pummeling their faces, they had made their, albeit forced, apologies. The soul of the little girl who had died on that street corner thanked Ichigo, which Ichigo brushed aside as he felt this was something she deserved. He then promised to return with some flowers to replace the ones the skater boys had trashed.

Later on, after school, Ichigo returned to replace the flowers only to find the spirit wasn't there. Calling for her for a minute or so, Ichigo then decided to go looking for her and in the process heard a resounding crash followed by a bone-chilling, inhumane, howl.

Upon reaching the location where the sound had came from, Ichigo found the same little girl's spirit that he had been searching for being chased by a monstrous figure. Its body was a dull gray, shaped like a praying mantis; its head had on it a white mask with soulless eyes. It had on it an almost perverse, leering, toothy smile.

Ichigo caught up to the girl spirit and began running beside her. He began asking her what was going on and what was the thing that was pursuing them. To no avail, though, as the girl had no answers as to who or what was chasing them. Then, something even more bizarre happened. From out of nowhere, a girl, looking to be around Ichigo's own age, dressed in a black kimono uniform, armed with a katana; jumped up to an impossible height and proceeded to slash down through the head of the monstrous being that had been pursuing them. After the blade had been sheathed, the monster had begun to disintegrate until it was no longer there.

Ichigo could only gape at what he had just seen. The mysterious girl turned to look at him for just a brief moment before truing away and then seemingly vanish. Ichigo called out for her and then, noticing that she was no longer by his side, the little girl's spirit. People surrounding the area began talking animatedly about the destruction of the area and associating it to the gas explosions that had been happening around the area.

Ichigo sighed and then decided to just go home, thinking along the way about the weirdness of all that he had experienced in that short brief time. He had thought it had all been over, that this day would end as the others did. Boy, was he wrong.

Just this evening, after dinner, Ichigo had been sitting in his room contemplating on the strangeness of all that had happened earlier in the afternoon, when he was disrupted by his thoughts by another loud vicious howl coming close to his home…

Ichigo sat up immediately, sweat began to build up at the base of his temples as his eyes widened.

He looked out his window as a threatening thought came to his mind. 'Is one of those things coming here?'

A resounding crash that shook the house followed shortly after his last thought, his body immediately sprung into action and ran for his door. Opening it, he found one of his younger sisters, Karin, on the floor, half of her face coated in blood and numerous bruises surrounding her face and her arms.

"I…Ichigo…good, you aren't hurt…" She weakly gasped out before passing out.

"Karin! Karin!" He lifted her up and cradled her body as he gently shook her to try and get her to awake once again. All that would come out of her were ragged gasps and then nothing. A loud echoing, screaming, sound coming from outside the house caused Ichigo to quickly set down his unconscious sister and bolt for the stairs.

Upon reaching the landing, Ichigo found a large hole in the wall, the house in utter disarray, and his father's bleeding form lying face down on the floor.

Hearing the unsettling screaming again, this time recognizing it to be his other sister, Yuzu, and abandoning the urge to check his father's condition; Ichigo ran through the hole in the wall to the outside and found his sister suspended in mid-air in the hand of one of those monstrous things.

"Yuzu!" Ichigo yelled.

"Ichigo! Help!" She cried out.

Ichigo looked wildly about for anything he could use to get his sister out from the clutches of that monster and found Karin's baseball bat lying in the grass near him. Grabbing it and then making a maddened-dash towards the evil that held his sister, Ichigo meant to swing at the hand that held his sister that was within swinging range. However, the beast, realizing that another was near and fast approaching; swug the same fist holding Ichigo's sister and smacked Ichigo a couple dozen yards away from it.

The eyes seemed to glimmer, if they could, as it sniffed the air and then immediately tossed the frail form of Yuzu to the side as it began approaching the staggering form of Ichigo who was in the process of getting back up.

"I found you!" It spoke in almost same volumes that were appropriate to its gigantic size.

Ichigo, still clutching the bat and using it to bring himself back up to his feet, glared at the monster while at the same time mentally sighing out of relief that Yuzu was no longer in its possession.

"Coward!" Ichigo spat as he painfully brought himself back up to his height. "Quit attacking my family. It's me you want, isn't it? Well then." He then gripped the bat tightly in one arm and swung it forward dramatically. "I'm right here. COME AND GET ME YOU UGLY BASTARD!!"

The monster roared as in accepting the challenge that Ichigo gave it and sprinted forward. Ichigo, as well, ran forward. His eyes were alive with determination. One thing in his mind remained constant and that was to protect his family from whatever this thing was. Time sped quickly and everything seemed to flow in slow-motion as Ichigo came to a stop and prepared to swing while the thing was still gaining as a hope to catch it before it had a chance to slow down and counter his attack.

When time came back, Ichigo found himself coughing up gushes of blood as an excruciating pain came to his left side. He glanced down and noticed that the thing had chomped down on him on his left side. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. Ichigo watched as he found his whole world spinning out of proportion. Just before he closed his eyes, he thought he saw a familiar girl with a sword jumping down from above and onto the monster's head.

When Ichigo found he was able to open his eyes again, once again he found it difficult to breathe. However, the pain that he had felt before was gone so was the seeping blood from his mouth. Ichigo looked down to inspect himself and found that his wounds were gone yet something else had replaced them.

A medal, octagonal plate with a ringlet attached to a series of chain rings, was centered on the middle of his chest and, after trying to pull on the broken set of chains attached to it, found the thing permanently attached to him.

Ichigo sighed as he got up onto his feet. Looking around, he found himself snapping back to reality as he remembered quickly what was happening before.

However, there was no sign of the monster he was fighting.

Ichigo looked around and when his eyes set onto a particular area i the street his eyes widened and his heart froze. There, lying in the street in a bloodied, disheveled, form was him.

To be continued....

Chapter Two: Ichigo goes to the soul society and once there, tries to locate his mother. The Thirteen Court Gard Squad discovers Ichigo's High spirit energy and sends out a person to approach him to join the Soul Reaper Academy.

A/N: Sorry to cut it short here but I'll be needing to expand this with the start of the second chapter. I know it's slow-going but I'm doing it like this on purpose as to try and formulate the idea as to what would have happened if Rukia hadn't been there and had showed up late. There'll be many changes coming into future chapters. As to what those are, you'll have to wait and see.

A/N: Please read and review

Q-n-P