To Those Who Walk on Different Planes
OK, first off, I'm not abandoning my other story, SAtR, I just have ha and Idea for a bleach crossover in the back of my mind forever and wanted to finally try my hand at it.
Second, continuity, obviously PP never happened, I also had Danny get ghost powers at 12 instead of 14, to give him some experience while at the same time staying equal in age to Ichigo and the crew. The rest of the cannon is still intact, with maybe a few tweaks here and there to help make sense of things. Reign Storm happens at the end of the official cannon, as a sort of replacer for PP, and I decided to add Valerie to the mix because I'd like to develop her in this, and since PP doesn't happen, it was either do it in story, which I didn't want to do, or develop as the story progresses.
Also, like in SAtR, intangibility doesn't cause the characters to go see through, again, that's a personal style choice on my part, sorry, I just don't like the effect that much, it seems pointless to me seeing as invisibility is not only a separate power, but can be activated in tandem with intangibility, so I never really say the point.
As far as bleach cannon goes, I'm stretching the time between episode 10 and 11 by a few days, just to have a build up for Danny, so it's in-between Don Kanonji and Uryu, just think of it as an extra character arc before the rescue mission arc, like Chad's or Orihime's.
(~)
"I finally get it…" He said, voice echoing richly with another worldly quality in the quite room "Pariah didn't go crazy with power, it was boredom."
Daniel James Fenton gave a one more bored sigh as he tapped the armchair of his throne. The new king sat on the throne of his keep, looking as if he wanted to be anywhere but sitting there. But then again, things rarely went as he intended, just look at him now.
The young ghost king sat in the spoils of his victory over Pariah Dark, in the keep of the king, but looking very different then when owned by its previous tenant. The foreboding red stone had become a black, metallic surface that would give an impressive shine, if not for the predominantly dark coloring of the realms sky. The Fortresses previous design, that of several structures haphazardly merged together, changed into a central tower like building, looking more like a citadel than a castle. It's ethereal green glow persists, but was augmented by swirling waves of ice blue which produced a chill that would freeze intruders to the bone. The little island the keep rested on had expanded, with a large forest of pitch black wood pine surrounding the keep.
The interior of the structure had changed as well, gone where the murals of carnage and brutal weaponry adorning the walls, now the keep had furniture and trappings that held the feel of an icy Nordic hall. Horns and furs of massive beasts adorned the walls and floor, furred rugs and furred banners, each adorned with his white DP symbol. Seating laid interspersed in the halls and rooms, adorned different decorations of strange, almost Celtic design, and many rooms holding massive grand fireplaces alight with large, eternal green flames. As cozy an image these trappings created, the keep was not without its own defenses, the animal furs and taxidermy were in fact a trap. An artificial creation of the keep that if invaded, would cause these simple decorations to come alive into a host of powerful and deadly creatures that would destroy an intruder, unless commanded otherwise.
And within the top floor of this looing fortress was the phantom king himself, sitting in the throne room. It hadn't changed to much of its structure from the previous king, the room was still vast, with the ceiling almost not visible to the normal human eye. The walls were themselves adorned with a menagerie of furs and trinkets, many gifted to Danny by his allies, Pandora, Dora, and Frostbite, to help him in his new "regime." On the floor was a long, beautifully designed black fur rug the lead from the very far entrance, across the room, and up the stairs to the elevated throne of the king. Before, this raised platform housed the sarcophagus of forever sleep, but Danny's fight with Pariah had … rendered the coffin pointless; he still kept it though, locked deep in the keeps vaults, just in case Vlad ever gave him a good enough reason to reuse it.
In its place was Danny's throne, made from the same black metal of his keep, fused into the floor, covered in glowing green runes, and with intricate sculptures of wolves serving as the chairs armrests, each holding a metal plate in their mouths with his ever famous DP symbol. The black rug of the floor covered and merged with the foot of the throne, continuing up the chair and becoming the seats cushion. From there, the black fabric continued up the back of the chair, which was a towering black metal spire, which as it ascended, blead into a massive pillar of cascading energies of black, green, blue and white, atop the spire was the DP made in white flames. Placed aside the throne were large, cage like braziers that held an erupting, Black and green "Fel" Flame, which would react to his emotions, which given his current state of boredom, meant the flames were fairly small at the moment, at least in comparison to their container.
Danny sat on the throne, leaning back with one hand on his armrest, the other holding his chin. The hybrid had changed drastically since adorning the crown. He wore a long imperial robe, its whole surface covered in glowing blue orb and celestial symbols, like an animated sky chart, and was trimmed in glowing gilded neon green. The robe came down just around his ankles, the lower section of which was open to reveal his legs, and was split into two sections down the back. The collar of the robe was large and hugged his neck, its folded lapels trimmed white, green, and icy blue fur. The robe was set in place by a fur trimmed, rune inscribed, metal belt, with a wolf face buckle in the middle, on its forehead was a glowing green engraving of his DP symbol.
On his right shoulder was a padded leather, fur trimmed shoulder pad, with a metal wolf face perched in the middle, covering most his shoulder, and engraved on the wolfs forehead was his DP in glowing green. On his left was a black cloth shoulder cape that reached just above his knee, fully covering his left side and kept in place by a decorative, fur trimmed black leather shoulder pad. The cape itself, was adorned with similar moving orbs of celestial light, trimmed in the same gilded neon green, and lined in a pure white. But in the middle was a large, connected constellation forming an intricate design of a large wolfs head, with a glowing pure white DP in the middle
On his hands were black leather gloves reaching more than half way up his forearm, covered in large, white metal plates, with large, claw like ends on his fingertips. On his feet, ha had similar Black leather boots, equally cover in white metal plating and reaching just below his knees. He wore lose black pants, that, combined with his primarily white boots and the pitch black inner lining of his rob, gave the illusion that he feet were separate from his body.
Around his neck, secured around his collar was a black metal brooch that held a dark green gem that looked like a reptilian eye. It was a gift from Dora, her brother's old medallion, with a little bit of training from Dora herself, Danny was able to incorporate its power and could transform just as easily as the siblings, albeit with a very different form from the two.
The physical appearance of his ghost form, much like his outfit, had changed as well. His boy had gained a foot and a half, gaining a few inches on jazz, even in human form, and while his muscles were more defined, his arms, legs and chest were still as thin as ever. His skin had turned a few shades darker than before, with intricate marks of glowing black and green tattoos all over his skin. His ears had elongated, becoming almost elf like, much to his dismay, and his teeth had sharpened into points and turned perpetually pure white, the inner lining of his mouth glowing a neon green. His face became angular and thin, his eyes and brow shaping in such a way as to give him the look of almost perpetually intense anger, even if he was happy as can be, or in this case, board out of his mind. His eyes had changed, the sclera of his eyes turned pitch black, and his irises had no pupils, becoming glowing Neon green. Over all, these new changes gave him a rather creepy face, with his friend tucker once saying,
"dude, I swear, smiling with that face looks down right evil. It's like every time you smile with that face, a puppy dies." Of course, that prompted retribution, which Danny earned by getting Dash to stuff Tucker into a locker, again. He would have done some bigger prank, but then Sam said she liked his new look … and well, who was he to argue with that. Along with his Face, his voice had changed, where before there was a small reverberation in his voice, his voice now had a clear, ethereal effect to it, sounding as if two or more of him spoke at the same time, one just being just a fraction of a second out of sync.
His hair had also changed, becoming naturally longer, to the point that he had to tie it back with a black cloth into a foot-long ponytail down his back. It now also glowed a fait white and flowed and ebbed, like a liquid flame or plasma. Adorned on his head was the crown of fire, which like his outfit, had changed with him.
Gone was the floating crown fire of Pariah, now it was a looping coronet of black stephanite, infused with the skin of his forehead. Around the metal where gems of glowing blue ice imbedded to small metal protrusions going upward, fading into white, black and green flames at the tips. The ring of rage had also changed, its face changing into that of a silver wolf face embedded with his DP; but Danny didn't were the ring, he had already had enough power flowing through him with the crown stuck to his forehead. Instead he phased the ring into his person, which he found out was a great way to store important items, such as the skeleton key, or even exchange items with his duplicates, as they were one person and linked to whatever space this phasing reached into.
He gave another bored sigh as he looked at the image before him; using his new found abilities and with his training from clockwork, Danny had learned how to create a spectral window from his Fel energy to view the human world. Looking like a large natural portal, but with camera like view of what he wished to vsee instead of the usual swirling vortex of green and black, and in this view screen was Sam, Tucker, and Valerie, all sitting in Lancer's class, taking notes, without him.
For three years, Danny had been a Halfa, working hard to keep his home town safe from any ghosts or anything else that might threaten it, even things he never knew existed. He had admittedly freaked out when he first saw the pluses, the lost souls of the dearly departed, doubly so when Sam and Tucker couldn't see a thing. But soon after, with experience and a few allies confirming their existence, they had learned just to cope with their existence. Sam herself, after the run in with Undergrowth, had developed the spiritual ability to control plants, and while Tucker never really had the amplitude to gain his own abilities, he did gain enough exposure to at least see them. It was only later, after Danny had begun training under clockwork and frostbite, did Danny even see a hollow. They normally never entered the city, along with the soul reapers, Amity being a hot spot for the zone long before people arrived. The chaos of the constant ghost attacks however, drew the dumber hollows to try and feed. By that time, Danny had more than enough training to know what they were and how to deal with them, Clockwork even taught Danny a spell that sent the pluses to the soul society. It was a good thing the soul reapers rarely looked into where purified souls came from, he'd rather not try and guess what they'd do if they discovered a hybrid.
But everything changed a year and a half ago, When Vlad idiotically tried to usurp Pariah from his throne and came crawling to Danny and friends for help. The battle was fierce, the fright night and Pariah's endless army of thralls were overwhelming. In desperation, Danny turned to Valerie, who had seemed mellowed out after the affair with Danielle, and revealed the truth to her, but given the giant clue of Danielle being a halfa, she had pretty much already figured out the truth. Things were understandably … awkward after that, but they had far more import problems at the time.
Even with as much aid as he could muster from both realms, the battle was intense, coming down to a one on one between Pariah and himself. In the end, Danny struck Pariah down, and with the source of the endless thralls gone, the army vanished. A cry of victory sounded after he dealt the final blow, but soon after was silenced from a blinding glow emanating from the fallen king's crown and ring, and soon after, Danny collapsed. He awoke in his new ghost form, in the master bedroom of his newly shifted keep, with Clockwork who had brought Sam, Valerie, Tucker and Jazz in right at the moment he awakened.
As Clockwork explained, the power of Pariah, the crown and ring, need a vessel to inhabit, their form and power subservient to that vessel, until such time that a new one is needed. So, as long as their vessel lives, the Crown and ring, even if separated, cannot change hands without the fall of the previous owner, in which case, ownership transfers by the traditional means in the ghost zone, the victor gets the spoils and automatically becomes the newest vessel. As angry as this made Danny, considering how this meant Vlad's plan was essentially pointless, he had enough of his wits to ask clockwork his most pressing question,
"What does being the vessel mean for me?" Clockwork's response shocked him.
"Nothing,"
As clockwork explained, Pariah never really had any claim to power in the ghost zone, he had no royal ties to any kingdom nor was the legitimate owner to any land outside his keep, just that his power was great enough that practically nothing could stop him. His "kingdom" consisted of a mindless thrall army of his creation, and all those that avoid destruction by serving him. Even his "most Loyal" knight, the Fright knight, apparently only served Pariah to save his own hide, given that he disappeared right after Pariah's fall. Even before during that embarrassing Halloween incident, he clearly was in no rush to wake his old master.
So While Danny held Pariah's power, He held no real responsibility with it; technically he held some political power as a lord of the land around the keep, but seeing as the keep was self-sustaining and no one was vying to live near Pariah's land, it wasn't like he was vital political leader. So he had no reason to stay in the keep at all, he could just go about his business and never touch the keep again.
But here he was, sitting on the throne, bored out of his mind, the reason being to keep his town safe, or at least, that was why at first.
Soon after gaining the throne, Danny trained under clockwork to learn the full extent of his new power, and it was from clockwork that he learned about barriers. With his new found strength, Danny constructed a subspace barrier between the ghost zone and the human world, to better keep the ghosts of the zone away from the humans, or more specifically, to keep them from swarming his home town. It wasn't perfect, and some of the clever or lucky ones could find a passage out, but even if they could slip through the barrier, they were hard pressed to stop Danny from sensing when they did. With the barrier in place, ghost attacks dropped to almost none existent. There was a catch, in order to sustain the barrier, Danny had to slightly empower it from time to time, meaning he had to spend long intervals in the zone. He couldn't just abandon his human life however, so he created a duplicate, one with just barely more than the average spiritual power than the average human, costing him practically no effort or strain to maintain the copy, and sent it to the human world. As his duplicates are essentially just extensions of his own consciousness, he could still experience a normal human life while still maintaining the peace between the realms, and if any of his friends or family were in danger, he could easily swap places with his doppelganger and help.
It took some time to get used to it, but seeing as the duplicate was still fully Danny, his friends and Jazz again learned to cope. Sam herself was actually fascinated by it, comparing it to the Hindu concept of an avatar, a deity who sends a physical incarnation to the mortal realm, but Danny wasn't too keen on the Idea. He had already had enough problems with crackpots thinking themselves as gods amongst men, he didn't want to join the club.
Of course this method did come with some perks, in-between classes, he could send his homework to the current him in the keep and with a few more duplicates could finish his homework earlier. Then there was the less productive upside, a chance to play video games and watch YouTube video's for as long as he wanted, literally as long, since this new form had the added benefit of not having to sleep. His duplicate still went to bed, the comfort was nice and he needed to fool his parents, as his mom had a gained an annoying habit of making sure he was in bed. Which to be fair, she gained when she discovered him out if it; not his fault Skulker loved his late night hunts. Honestly, this system become so useful that when the barrier had stabilized to the point of needing very little oversight from Danny, he still kept a copy in both worlds. It just became another facet of his life, just another part of the day, like his new growing pass time, training.
"Now there's an idea,"
Danny sat up and lifted his right hand to his chest, plunging his hand into his heart. It only took half a second for him to find what he was looking for, and quickly pulled out a blade. The blade was a medieval style long sword, 40 in. long blade, 10 in. long hilt and 2 in. in width. The guard was an 8 in. broad fuller made of pure white metal with a glowing blue Ice crystal imbedded in the middle. The hilt was made of black metal, wrapped in white cloth that was covered in black runic text. Below, at the end of the hilt was a white metal spade with a glowing green and black crystal within. The blade itself held a ling groove on both sides, and was covered in three lines of runic text on both sides. One line, near one of the blades edges glowed green and black, The other edge glowed and icy-blue, with the middle line of text glowing pure white.
This was Danny's blade, Rex Rapaces, formed from his training with clockwork, who taught him how to use reriyoku, or spiritual power, and what it meant to both him and ghosts. Ectoplasm was a unique substance, holding a measure of reshi and mundane living world elements, a sort of mixture of spirit particles and atoms. Normally these don't mix well, and indeed, ectoplasm was known to be very chaotic by nature, just look at the ghost zone, but there is always an exemption in nature, and ectoplasm was just that. Because of this merged existence, ectoplasm had several unique properties, making it possible to be seen by both normal humans and beings made of reshi, but could allow those who controlled it to slip out of sight and physical contact with any of the other two, be it hollows humans or even soul reapers. Also, because of its strange middle ground existence, ectoplasm could be sensed by reshi beings, but gave very low or obscure readings, making it appear much weaker than it actually was.
In regards to Danny's reiatsu, it had developed in similar nature to that of a soul reaper, albeit greatly altered. Much of his powers and abilities, while structured around his ghostly nature, had many qualities akin to that of a soul reaper, including what you might call a halfa zanpakuto and a plethora of soul reaper like techniques, from Hoho, Zanjutsu, Hakudo, to his own unique brand of Kido. There were, however, several differences, one great example was while his Zanpakuto had a name, it didn't have a spirit or personality as soul reaper zanpakuto have. He had an inner world, as any soul does, and the sword had the standard release forms, but there was no separate personality held within the blade. According to Clockwork, the blades spirit is formed when the soul in question becomes aware of the blade and it is split from the soul, but Danny's change into a halfa changed that, causing whatever spirit that could have been formed to remerge with his soul, forming the physical aspect of his ghost half. So in essence, Danny was his own blade's spirit, which was a dizzying concept to understand even now. The fact that he'd never develop a separate spirt for his sword felt a tad lonely, but then again that meant there wasn't another person in his head to watch everything he did, so there was an upside.
After looking at the blade for a second, Danny decided against training, he had already had a morning session with Pandora, and if she caught wind, or more likely sensed, that he was willing to do more training, there wouldn't be much left of him. while he loved the Greek goddess like an aunt, her more "Spartan" style training was something no amount of boredom could justify. So reluctantly he brought the sword to his chest and drove the blade back into his heart, then turned back to the view screen of his class as they lifelessly taking notes from Lancer's monotone droll on Shakespeare, and for once in his life, actually wish he was there, which by all rights he should be. But no, he couldn't be in class today, seeing as Danny Fenton no longer attended Casper high anymore, and the reason Danny Fenton couldn't attend Casper High was because the Fenton's no longer lived in Amity park anymore, all because of Danny.
In hindsight, He should have guessed this would happen, with his barrier restricting the ghosts, there was no need for ghost hunters in Amity. Faced with that, his parents decided to move to where their "skills" and abilities could be of most use, a Japanese town by the name Karakura town. Which apparently was the top contender with Amity of being the most haunted town in the world, or at least it was now given Amity's lack of ghost attacks. So, after a few days to get their things in order and settling both his and Jazz's transfers to the local high school, the Fenton's speeded their way to Japan.
Given that, Danny closed his eyes and focused on his human duplicate, who was currently with his family on their way across the pacific. The Fenton's never traveled by plane, mainly because his mom and dad were listed on the nations no fly list, given their instance to always carry ecto-weaponry on their person 24/7. Instead, the Family was loaded up on the Family ops-center as it was currently in jet form, speeding to their destination, much of their luggage stored behind them in small, spatial compression devices his mom and dad developed from reverse engineering the Fenton crammer. At the helm, his mother was currently flying, his father acting as navigator as the two adamantly talked on what kind of ghosts Japan could offer as he and his sister Jazz sat in the seats behind them.
Jazz, currently 17, was wearing her usual long sleeved black blouse and teal slacks, reading from a compressive guide to Japanese; she had already studied the language to be as proficient with it as possible, but that never stopped her from improving before. Danny himself had worked hard to get the langue down, it was amazing how much you can learn when you dedicate a small army of yourself to the task. To her left sat Danny, 15, and to anyone but his sister, sleeping as if dead to the world. He was wearing loose blue jeans, with a brown cloth belt, and his usually red and white sneakers, just a few sizes bigger than before. He was wearing an inverse of his usual shirt, red with a white oval and a white zipper hoodie. His human form had changed somewhat with his ghost, but not enough to raise suspicion from his parents. His hair was as long as it was in ghost form, this time bound by white cloth as his bangs had grown past his forehead and would cover his eyes. His human face did gain much of the structural changes of his ghost form, only far less intense, giving him a look of perpetual brooding despite whatever mood he was in.
Jazz had lowered her book at looked to her brother as she heard him stir, eventually opening his eyes and "waking up." Their mother to herd him move and tilted her head back to look at him,
"Morning sweetie! Did you have a good rest?"
Danny gave a fake yawn and replied "eh, I've had better."
His mother gave a good natured chuckle as she returned to her discussion with his father, becoming deft to anything that didn't involve their decision and piloting. Jazz on the other hand rolled her eyes at his poor attempts at humor,
"so original, what actually brings you back to the mortal world?"
Danny gave a quick snort as he turned to his sister, "can't a guy just enjoy the company of his family?"
A raised eyebrow and an incredulous look was his answer, "ok to be honest, I'm bored out of my mind, I've already done my morning training, played every game I wanted to, I even went over the entrance exam to correct my mistakes."
They had both had to take the high school's entrance exam to qualify for transfer, needless to say Jazz passed with flying colors. As for Danny, ever since gaining so much free time and with an army of himself to help study, his grades for the past year had skyrocket back up from the pit they dropped when he was first starting out. He certainly didn't break any records, but he had improved enough to pass the exam, and finally stop worrying his parents, which was a great load of his back. Even still, to be bored enough to go something so Jazz like was just confirmed his ever increasing boredom crisis.
He sat back, giving a loud bored sigh as he tried to regain a comfy purchase on his seat. His sister however frowned,
"Danny, you're not bored, if you were bored, you would have rather taken that extra training with Pandora over doing any studying." Her eyes narrowed but "Not that you shouldn't have done your studying."
A weak chuckle escaped his lips as he brought his right hand to the back of his neck, but Jazz's firm look morphed into one of concern "It's not boredom Danny, I've seen this in you before, your restless, somethings bothering you, I can tell."
Danny dropped his hand with another sigh, leave it to Jazz to know him better than he did. He turned to the outside window, the sun had just dawned over the horizon, and in just a few hours, they'd hit Karakura. Jazz spoke up, with a gentle leading voice,
"are you worried about Amity?"
Danny thought about it for a moment, but he knew his answer before she asked "No, not really,"
Amity's dangers were almost completely mundane now, now that the ghosts had disappeared from the public eye. There were still the hollows, But the lingering spectral imprint of the ghosts should keep the smarter thugs away. At best they'd get the simpler minded ones, but these guys were low level bugs most of the time, nothing Valerie, Sam and Tucker couldn't handle. Even if something big were to happen, he still could pop over to Amity whenever he wished, which he planned to do anyway to hang out with his friends now and then. Amity was in the clear for now, the really bad news wasn't Amity, but of their new home.
"it's not Amity that's trouble, it's Karakura."
A look of surprise flashed across Jazz's face before she released an almost soundless groan as she brought her hand to her face,
"please don't tell me mom and dad found ANOTHER town crawling with ghosts,"
Danny was tempted to say yes just to mess with her, but h decided against it "no, it's not ghosts that are the problem."
That got her attention as she brought her hand down and looked at him with a mixture of confusion and worry.
"I've been asking around the zone about the world's newest "most hunted town", and from what I've heard, the towns a jureichi, or important spirt ground" Danny leaded forward and rested his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands "Which means it's a veritable buffet for hollows."
Now that got a reaction from Jazz; like Tucker, she never really had the aptitude to developed her own abilities, but her exposure to higher levels of ghostly reiatsu gave her the ability to see reshi beings. Her first look at a hollow was of a low level centipede that blindly charged into town and honed in on her for her slight higher the average spiritual pressure. However, it didn't even get to touch her before Danny sliced it down the middle with one stroke, reshi beings were only subtle about their energy when they tried to hide, and Danny could small the beast coming a mile away.
The experience did leave Jazz a little shaken up, ghosts, especially the animal spirits could be vicious, but their neon glowing green and strange anatomy put them in a more inhuman level of creepy. Hollows on the other hand, screaming with their old human voices and bleeding of red blood had just enough qualities to hit rock bottom in the uncanny valley to seem slightly more unnerving. That and while ghosts could be dangerous, only the rare ghost was malevolent enough to actively try and kill or devour a person, the most others did was random destruction. But hollows, and some of the more disturbed spirits only moved to kill and eat people, which meant Danny had no choice but to end them. Jazz was a tough person, and wouldn't let the idea of hollows scare her too much, but that didn't mean she was all too comfortable entering a potential feeding frenzy.
"That does sound like trouble, but nothing we can't handle." She said, sending a small smile to reassure her brother. Danny however didn't acknowledge it, looking at his hands he bounced his arms on his knees.
"Danny?"
There was a pause in the air before he spoke up "we shouldn't worry too much about the hollows, the Fenton tech will shake them off the house, and a spiritual place like Karakura is sure to have an active soul reaper to keep the peace."
That last part was meant to be encouraging, but in truth, neither of them were too keen on letting soul society knowing about Danny, given what they heard about it. It was a big bureaucracy more concerned about their regulations then the people they affect, and they hadn't had the best track record with such shadowy organizations, the GiW being a chief example. Then there was the fact that apparently Pariah had enacted a bloody war some centuries back before his imprisonment, leaving the soul society a very sour note regarding ghosts. Still, they had never met a soul reaper, even after all the craziness of Amity, so as long as Danny was careful, he would most likely be regarded as a spiritually attuned human and be left alone. But as scary as the thought of being discovered was, that wasn't what was bothering him, the question was,
"Then what is it that has you so tense Danny?"
Danny looked up from his hands and leveled Jazz concerned frown "honestly? I don't have a clue, it's just …"
He leaned back in his seat and let out soft sigh, "We've seen things go crazy before, after a while you pick up on stuff, things you can't explain and just bug the crap out of your intuition."
He paused for a moment as Jazz twirled her chair and tilled her head to get a better look at his face "and right now, my intuition is screaming, Somethings going to happen in Karakura, I can just feel it."
Jazz just stared at his face for a second before shaking her head "Danny, this is the Fenton family luck we're talking about, of course somethings going to happen when we get there, I'd be more concerned if it was too quite."
So much of Danny wanted to dispute his sister pessimism of their family's good fortunes, but the truth was hard to argue with.
"You can't let this eat at you Danny, you don't have to answer to every problem, just try to keep calm and brace yourself to deal with whatever comes, you can't just sit there and pull your hair out in "boredom"." With that she lifted her Book back up,
"and you certainly won't keep me from learning the langue, not everyone can form think tanks on demand."
Danny gave a small amused snort before giving one last sigh and turning his head to sneak a peek at his father's instruments. From what he could see, they still had 1 or 2 hours left until they reached their destination. He turned his head to look at the growing day light, thoughts drifting as the Jet blasted its way to their new home.
(~)
"… ok I'll bite, what's the deal here? Did you call for back up or…"? He asked, angry scowl plastered on his face, looking at the absurdity before him.
"Waa … why the hell do you think I had anything to do with this?!" She yelled, fist raised to administer pain should what he says not please her.
"because you are the sole source of the weirdest shit in my life right now, so how could it be anyone but you?!" An angry standoff between the two ensued as they glared right at each other.
Ichigo Kurosaki had, for once, a very pleasant morning, having finally got a good night's rest after that crap with Don Kanonji a few nights back, no hollow attacks caused him to rush out the window, his father didn't even try to attack him out of the blue. It was so nice, and it freaked the crap out of him, there was no way his morning could be this peaceful, it was glaring sign for disaster to come. So with extreme trepidation, Ichigo dressed for the school day, peeking out his window to make sure his father wasn't trying something stupid like jumping through the window to wake him up and that's when he saw it. His father was outside alright, along with both his little sisters and much of the surrounding neighborhood, looking into the sky at a hovering metallic jet that was floating above the street, right in front of the empty house next to the Kurosaki clinic. The craft was massive, looking familiar enough for Ichigo to classify it a jet, while looking like no jet he'd ever seen before. And what the crap was on the side? it looked like some kind of company brand, but he couldn't remember a company that had a large capital F in a neon green flame.
He had no words, well except three,
"WHAT THE HELL?!"
His sudden outburst brought Rukia out from his closet dressed for school that day, and startled Kon awake, and now here they were in his room, glaring at each other. That was until Kon apparently had enough of the argument, hopping onto Ichigo's bed and shouting,
"Hey, lay off my Rukia, stupid!" Ichigo was about to bring down HIS fist on the little cretin till he pointed out the window "if you HAVEN'T noticed yet, everyone including your whole family is looking right at that thing, so it couldn't be from soul society!"
As much as Ichigo wanted to pound that little smug dish rag, he had conceded that the mod soul had a point, besides, he knew how this song and dance goes.
"Thank you Kon! You always stick up for me." Rukia gave the plushy a large warm smile, which prompted the little pervert to jump at Rukia's chest, and was swatted down with extreme prejudice. Honestly he wondered if Rukia did this on purpose, but then again, he really didn't care.
"so back to the topic at hand, to whatever the crap that thing is."
Both he and Rukia turned to the window, "I'll go check with my family, maybe they know something about this." Rukia nodded,
"I'll come with, if your family asks, I just say I stopped to look on my way to school."
Leaving Kon to writhe on the floor, they exited the house and walked up to Ichigo's family, his father holding his chin in what looked like over exaggerated confusion. His sister Yuzu Had a look of starry eyed amazement as she moved about taking pictures of the strange floating craft. And his other sister Karin had a look of annoyed confusion that belong squarely on Ichigo's face, sparking a small, unspoken and ignored note of pride within him. He approached his Family, with Rukia in tow, as they were apparently to busy gawking to notice her leave from their own house.
"SO, anyone know what's up with UFO above us?" He asked, giving the word UFO as much of a sarcastic influence as he could. The three of them turned to him, a look of recognition passes through them as they looked Rukia's way, but apparently the craft above them was more important than heckling him, the only positive thing about this weird jet so far.
"Good morning Ichigo and Ichigo's friend," Yuzu greeted them, lowering her camera and giving a warm smile, but instead of Yuzu, Ichigo's question was answered by Karin,
"not a clue, according to the noisy neighbor great vine gathered here, some weird family in America bought the house a few days ago, but I didn't hear anything about them having hovercrafts."
"Isn't great though!" his father boisterously declared, "now our little neighborhood has chance to become more culturally aware! A chance to learn from our strange new space age and or alien friends! Take this as a great learning experience my children!"
Ichigo couldn't suppress his look of incredulous embarrassment even if he wanted to, Seriously, did the old man always have to declare his insanity to the world every chance he got?
Before Ichigo could respond, the noise of a suction of air caught their attention. The bottom panel of the craft had pressed inward, then quickly spilt in half and retracted into the craft, creation an open hole on the belly of the ship. From said hole descended a railed rectangular platform, connected to the craft itself by hydraulically extending rods on all four corners of the platform. On the platform, descending right in front of his family, were two of the strangest people Ichigo had ever seen, and considering the crap Don Kanonji put him through, that's saying a lot.
First was the man, who Ichigo assumed to be the father in this strange foreign family, who was massive, not just in girth but in height, easily a foot and a half taller than his own father, and wearing what looked like some kind of SYFI bright orange jump suit and had a giant grin on his face. Next was most likely the mother, looking quite young next to her bear of a husband, wearing light make-up and an equally strange outfit, only teal. Next to the strange couple were what appeared to be their children, a smart looking girl with bright orange hair that looked to be a few years older the Ichigo, and next to her a rather emo looking dark haired boy, that seemed Ichigo's age, and only an inch or two taller.
Both their attire was thankfully far more normal, but as Ichigo looked at the two, something pricked at the back of his mind, not unlike the feeling he got with that soul reaper guy or a hollow. It didn't last long, but something just didn't feel right, when he looked closer at the girl, he barely felt anything, just a simple little spark in his senses, and she didn't seem to notice his concentration, only sifting from side to side in slight discomfort. The guy next to her was something else entirely, Ichigo didn't feel much from him, but what he did feel was … unnerving. With the other soul reaper and hollows, Ichigo felt a strange pressure on his shoulders, like something was trying to weigh him down. But with this guy, he felt no such weight, instead he felt … cold, like a hidden chill raced up his spine and scattered his nerves, like a cold spark ran through his nerves. That alone was unsettling, but as he looked at the guy's face, Ichigo realized the guy was staring right at him, wide eyed. Ichigo tensed as he looked right at the guy, whose look suddenly shifted to right beside him, where Rukia stood, before suddenly looking away, apparently determined not focus on them.
Ichigo looked back to Rukia, and saw she was looking wide eyed right at the guy, a little sweat building on her brow, as the family descended, her whole attention was focused on the dark haired kid. The loud voice of the bear man brought him back to the family,
"Here we are family, our new home!"
The man yelled in English, in a clearly American accent, before his wife spoke up as well, opening the gate of the metal railing to let the family out,
"Honey, you might want to activate your translator, it looks like our neighbors are here to great us."
The giant gave a smack of his forehead before tapping the collar of his strange suit, causing it to glow green, and spoke again spoke again. But this time, to Ichigo's shock, while the lip movements were clearly spoken English, no English left his mouth, instead a metallic, Japanese version of the man's speech came out just a microsecond after he moved his lips.
"Thanks Maddie, almost forgot!"
The family had fully exited their platform, and much to Ichigo's horror, began walking towards his, the couple both bearing large welcoming grins as the Father once again spoke,
"Hello new neighbors! So good to finally get to the new homestead after that long flight!"
Even in translated Japanese, the man's loud voice came in clear and boisterous; Ichigo's own father came up to greet them with an equally large smile and even louder voice, as if he took this man's natural booming voice as a challenge.
"Great to Have you! My names Isshin Kurosaki, these two lovely angels right here are my daughters, Yuzu and Karin!" introducing his daughters, he placed a hand on both the heads with the largest grin on his face.
Yuzu gave a little giggle and responded with a bubbly "nice to meet you,"
Karin gave a bored sigh a just gave a quick "hi," but Ichigo caught her giving the dark haired kid a quick, nervous glance. Then, sounding as if sobering up, Ichigo's father gave simple smile and brought a hand to Ichigo's should,
"and this is my son Ichigo and a friend of his from school,"
Ichigo gave a quick wave and an uninterested "Yo," as Rukia introduced herself in her fake, bubbly attitude and happy smile "My names Rukia Kuchiki! It's great to meet you." Honestly, any more fake sugar in her speech and Ichigo was going to hurl, but he did notice her making a quick look at the emo kid, looking like she was expecting him to react to her name, no such luck as the kid didn't even flinch.
The mother of the American family spoke up, speaking in fluent, albeit accented Japanese "thank you all, it's great to meet you too, my name is Maddie Fenton, and this is my husband Jack,"
Both mother and father shared a quick handshake with Ichigo's dad, although it looked quite rough when the fathers shook, but then again it probably wasn't too fun to shake hands with a bear.
"over here we have you kids Jazmine and Daniel" The dark haired kid frowned just a bit before speaking up, his Japanese just as accented and just a little below his mother, but still fluent enough to fully understand,
"Just Danny please," he extended a hand to Ichigo and gave a small smile "nice to meet you, noticed you guys wearing the Karakura High uniform, you going there?"
Ichigo debated for a second, but weird feelings aside, the guy hadn't done anything wrong, so there was no reason to act like an ass, yet. He gave the hand a quick shake, it didn't have much strength but felt a little cold.
"yea, class 1-3, same as cavity girl here." That earned him a rather hard smack on the head from Rukia, but more notably a small snort and chuckle from the new kid, weird, didn't look like the kind of guy with a sense of humor. Recovering from his blow he asked,
"how'd you know the uniforms?"
The sister spoke up this time, in a polite, accented, but just as equally fluent Japanese as her mother, "Because we got our uniforms in the mail a few days ago, you can just call me Jazz by the way, I'll be in year three, Danny's in first year."
She too offered her hand to shake, and consider how little weird vibes were coming from her, Ichigo had very little to mentally debate over, and just like you would expect from a normal person, her hand shake was nice and warm. With everyone introduced, Ichigo's dad spoke up,
"with that out of the way, I do have to ask, what exactly did you come from, and do they all have hovercrafts?" What should have sounded like a joke question sounded like a confused inquire from his father, although with a bit cornier. Maddie Fenton answered,
"Oh just a little town in Illinois called Amity Park,"
Ichigo heard a gasp from Yuzu and turned from his watch emo looking kid, Danny, and saw as awed recognition passed through her face,
"Amity park?! As in the most haunted town in the world Amity park!?"
Of course, it only made sense some foreign spiritual weirdness arrived right at his doorstep, frankly, the only thing he was really shocked about was that Karakura didn't make the top of the list, it's got to be up there though. Ichigo's father spoke up next,
"oh yea, your town had its own segment on Don Kanonji's Bura Tama, but last I heard, Amity lost the most haunted title to Karakura not to long ago, something about the ghosts flat out disappearing."
Well, would you look at that, the fact that his own made most haunted didn't really come as a chock to Ichigo, what really startled him is that the dumbass Kanonji's show actually had something useful in it. The bear of the Fenton's father respond,
"That's actually what brought us down here in the first place, with the ghost scared of in Amity, we needed somewhere to keep up our work!"
Work? Now that Ichigo thought about it, it was defiantly a giant, blaring red flag of trouble if these people had a feature story on that idiot's show, he looked back at the Fenton siblings, both looking more and more embarrassed the more they talked about how haunted their old town was. He looked away again as he heard his father give a cry of retaliation,
"ah ha, I thought I recognized your name, you're that family of spectral scientist and hunters based in Amity, although I guess that's changed to here now hasn't it? From what I heard, your supposed to be the best in your field."
It took every ounce of his self-restraint not to face-palm, couldn't he go with one week without dealing with crap like this? On a positive note, they shouldn't get too much in the way, from what he could guess, these two were ordinary humans. But then again, both he and Rukia had underestimated Don Kanonji's spiritual insight, and that almost ended in disaster, then there were the couple's kids to worry about.
Speaking of which, the older sister spoke up, clearly wanting to end this conversation, "well, it's been great, but we should really get unpacked."
The giant man turned to his daughter and gave her a pat on the back, which almost knocked the poor girl over, "right you are Jazzy- pant!" Oh, now that was funny, for the first time Ichigo dropped his intense stair and gave a small chuckle at the nickname, shared by the girl's brother, who got a quick swat on the back of the head from his red faced sister.
Meanwhile, the orange clad giant had dug up a strange, smartphone like device from one of his many pockets, and after few quick taps, the lowered platform began rise back up into the craft as the whole thing began to transform. Quickly, while floating in midair, the craft changed into a strange disk like object, glowing radio disks and antennae springing out from all sides. The craft then floated over to the Fenton's new home as strange metal appendages began descending into the roof of the building as the strange, alien device began grafting itself into the once innocent home. Soon, the strange metal monstrosity settled on its new perch when suddenly, a hatch opened from the bottom of the large disk, and down floated a strange neon sign, flashing the name Fenton and the kanji for works next to it, that latched itself besides home's entrance.
Ichigo stood there stunned, it was like watching something from a bad alien invasion movie, out of the weird crap he'd seen taking this stupid substitute job, this was by for the weirdest, and he wasn't even on the clock. The rest of his Family stood mouths agape, but had no time to respond before Jack Fenton turned to them,
"well, it's been great talking, but we really should get things ready, Danno and Jazzy here have school tomorrow, and me and Maddie have to start getting the lab up and running!"
So with that insanity, and with the looks of utter humiliation from both the Fenton siblings, the father led his family to their new home. Frankly Ichigo didn't know whether to be glad that it was over, or lament the metric ton of crazy that just blew in. still, nothing to do about it now, so he just gave a long suffering sigh and bid his family farewell as he and Rukia left or school. Once they were out of ear shot of his family, Rukia donned her usual serious tone,
"so, Ichigo, what did you make of that?" he stopped in his tracks and looked back to the serious faced Rukia, his face barely changing from his usual frown,
"honestly? I thought my family was as weird as it got, but I think I just found the bench mark," he clicked his tongue, not so much to being derogatory to the Fenton's, weird though they were, they weren't all that bad, at the very least they were polite.
"as for this whole ghost hunting business? Well not sure how much sock I put into that until I see it. Unless they start messing with the pluses, there's not much we can do besides keeping an eye on them,"
His eyes narrowed as he remembered the weird vibe from that emo looking guy, "especially that Danny kid."
He was about to continue walking until Rukia dropped a bomb on him,
"I'd put a lot more on the ghost hunting if I were you, from what I could tell, they have at least some degree of experience with the real thing."
He stopped dead, and turned to face her with a look of genuine surprise, "wait, you mean they can see spirits, I thought they were regular humans, they looked regular …" and image of the couple's flashy outfits shot through his head, "…. at least in the sense that they felt like they couldn't actually see this crap."
Rukia shook her head, "no, they were defiantly normal humans, that I'm certain of. More than likely, they were talking about actual ghosts."
Ichigo blinked, what does she mean actual ghosts? Rukia looked at his face and said,
"that's right, I never really taught you the difference, seeing as it didn't have a lot to do with your duties as a soul reaper."
Without warning, Rukia pulled out here sketch pad, while Ichigo prepped himself to receive the useful info with the crappy drawings.
"all spiritual beings, like pluses, hollows, and soul reapers are made of reshi or spirit particles, because of this, most beings made of human world atoms can't see these beings unless they have a high enough level of spiritual pressure."
The discussion was informative, it really was, But Ichigo had to wonder why she had to draw the human world atoms like crappy looking ducks and the reshi like crappy looking rabbits. She flipped the page and began hastily drawing the rest of her examples while continuing her speech,
"normally these two forms of matter don't mix well, but in large dimensional pockets between the human world and spirit world, they mix and find homeostasis, becoming what is called ectoplasm."
She flipped to show one side of the paper having group of the stupid looking ducks and rabbits mixing with a large x crossing them out. On the other was a group of both the stupid looking animals in some kind of mock addition equation, with a result of what he would imagine ectoplasm looked like, then again, it's hard to mess up drawing green goop.
"follow me so far?"
"yea, despite how crappily drawn your examples are."
That got him what he expected, the sketchbook thrown at his face, but what can he say, he was an honest man. Rukia continued on despite her obvious anger,
"anyway! Ectoplasm has a unique property, it can receive the thoughts and wills of living humans through a connection between their natural spiritual pressure and its own natural reshi, shaping and molding based on whatever signals it receives. The beings created from this molding are ghosts."
Recovering from his blow while still hearing her whole explanation, Ichigo gave Rukia a completely serious look,
"Are they a threat? Do they eat human souls like hollows?"
Rukia was silent for a second,
"not really, most are just harmless, preferring to stay they're home world, there is occasionally some trouble makers, but usually their hardly a threat. There are some that do attack humans, living or dead, and even their fellow ghosts, but these are highly rare and are among the most malevolent of their type."
She gave a short pause, looking down for a second in contemplation,
"in truth, soul society doesn't have much information on ghosts, we do know that they have strange abilities shared amongst them. Flight being one, along with the ability to phase through anything, they can even go invisible, even to reshi beings like soul reapers and hollows. And because of the strange mixture of reshi and regular atoms, ectoplasm can be difficult to detect, making them hard to see coming."
Ichigo's brows jumped in surprise, hollows where tough enough to keep down, he'd hate to fight something he couldn't see or touch. Rukia lifted her head as she continued,
"the real problem is that many have their own unique abilities pertaining to the thoughts and conceptions that formed them. Some can be downright silly like a spirit of roads or newspaper or boxes."
That broke the tension, Ichigo raised one incredulous eyebrow "boxes? Really?"
She just gave a quick one shouldered shrug "eh, I was just listing of ridiculous things from the top of my head, the point is it could be anything."
Fair enough to him, Ichigo gave a little shrug before Rukia regained her focused attitude,
"and the more powerful the concept, the more powerful the ghost, like elemental spirits that can level a town in a furious rampage, or some beings formed from ancient religions of powerful gods."
Rukia's eyes narrowed as she looked Ichigo dead in the eye,
"there are even ghosts that have more power than some of the most powerful soul reapers."
Now that brought a chill down Ichigo's spine, "seriously?"
Rukia gave a quick nod, "yea, the most powerful ghost soul society had ever seen was one known as the ghost king, Pariah Dark; centuries ago, he attacked and nearly brought the soul society to its knees."
Rukia walked over to a nearby wall and leaned against it, looking up as she continued, "according to the stories, Pariah was unstoppable, he tore through some the best defenses soul society had like paper, and lead an army of countless skeletal warriors to lay siege to the Seireitei, destroying anything in his path."
There was a pause in the air, and wanting to get to the point, Ichigo spoke,
"well, what happened next? Considering this happened centuries ago and we still have the soul society around, I'm guessing you guys found a way to beat him."
Rukia gave a deep sigh as she hung her head, not filling Ichigo with a lot of confidence, "that's just the thing, we didn't."
"What?!"
Rukia paused for a second, "Just before he delivered the final blow to soul society, Pariah Dark left, his army leaving with him, neither he nor his legion have been heard from since. From what little we could gather, there seemed to be a major revolt going on in the ghost's home dimension, but soul society has had no intel on whether Pariah won or not."
She lifted her head to look straight up across the street, "Many have speculated that since he's been gone for centuries, he was thrown out of power or killed, but in truth we don't know, it could be that he's still fighting that revolt, or it could be that he was badly injured and is just licking his wounds. It could even be that he was killed and his successor has yet to make a move."
She lifted herself from the wall and faced Ichigo, as she crossed her arms in front of her chest, "Soul society has recovered from the attack, there's little to no trace of Pariahs rampage left, and since the attack, soul society has gotten a lot more powerful, with higher regulations on key officers strength. But many still remember the horror that Pariah brought, there's countless stories of the atrocities he enacted. He may be gone, but there still the lingering fear that he'll come back to finish what he started."
There was a long silence as Ichigo digested her words,
"the good news is that while some can be tough, most ghosts avoid spiritually active locations like Karakura, so we shouldn't run into any."
That was good an all, but a question in this mess stuck Ichigo like a falling stone,
"wait, how do you know the Fenton's have any experience with actual ghosts?"
She blinked before a look of realization stuck her face "oh that's right, I guess we got a little off topic, well the first clue was the floating craft thing of theirs, while ectoplasm can be hard to detect, the thing was emitting high concentrations of it. My guess is that the Fenton's have learn to somehow harness ectoplasm in some way, pretty amazing now that I think about it, the heads in the department of research would roll if they heard about this."
It was a weird shift in tone, she was speaking so dramatically before about the ghost king, now she acted so flighty, it's like she reverted back of her fake school girl persona, and it left Ichigo feeling a little unnerved.
"More importantly," she said, her voice once again adopting her more serious tone, like a switch had ben flick on an off,
"Those two kids, while Jazz didn't have too much spiritual pressure, it was clear that she was at least spiritually aware, though given the families exposure to ectoplasm that isn't to surprising, I can only guess the parents aren't because of those protective suits they ware."
Her eyes narrowed as she looked to the side "The boy, Danny though, was different; it was hard to get a hold of his spiritual pressure, even though he could clear pick up on ours. And what little I could feel felt … off, it wasn't like usual spiritual pressure, it felt … "
"cold" Ichigo finished or her as she turned her head to him again and gave him a quick nod,
"to be honest, I've never felt anything like it, he didn't seem to suspicious, but we should keep an eye on him, just in case."
Ichigo gave his own nod before turning around, "well I guess that's all we can do, for now we better hurry up and get to class or we'll be late."
At that he started sprinting to school, with Rukia scrambling to pick up her tossed sketchbook at follow after him,
"wait up! I tossed my sketchbook!"
"Then do us both a favor and leave it!"
A re tossed sketchbook later, Ichigo was holding the back of his head
"Ow!"
(~)
I hoped you like the first chapter
Like SAtR, I'm kind of making this as I go, I have a vague Idea of how I want this to play out, but I'm really just doing this to vent an idea. I kind of wish I could give you guys an illustration of my redesigns, but again, I'm a crappy artist, so I hope I conveyed the look adequately enough. Please read and review, I get a lot out of your comments, especially on something I've done wrong, it helps me to improve so please share, thx!
Oh and the name of Danny's blade is in Latin, and I plane to make all his releases AND all his techniques in Latin, cuz toy know … dead language? … well it makes more sense than the hollows all using Spanish.
rex rapaces- king wolves/ king of the wolves