Hey y'all, thanks for picking my story... it's my first ever, so REVIEW please... much appreciated.

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Flowing black robes, swords of different shapes and sizes... the clang of clashing swords... a tall man in black wearing shades, bathed in white light...

Darkness, darkness all around. There was no up, no down, no feeling, no sensation whatsoever, except for the dull throb he felt where his head should be...

A smiling woman reaching towards him (who was she?)... a man with short dark hair and a stupid grin jumping at him... two young girls in swimwear running toward him, laughing... (who were these people?)...

...He felt a sensation of falling, falling forever down some bottomless pit, towards the gaping mouth of a vast dragon whose screams echoed through the dark. He had no recollection of his identity. His memory was as blank as a slate, except for the few fleeting images that meant nothing to him...

A tall kid with orange hair (what?) wearing those weird robes, a huge sword strapped to his back... a sensible-looking kid, pushing his glasses up his nose... a big guy with such sad eyes... and a girl...crying...

...Nausea rolled over him in waves as his eyes fluttered open and shut, open and shut. Far, far away, he could hear a maniacal laugh mocking him, as if from a million miles out and through treacle, yet somehow weirdly superimposed over the screams...

A weird sensation, like winter's fingers clasping his head...then unimaginable pain...then nothing...

...Where was he? Who was he? How old was he? What did he look like? He had no idea. The laugh reached a crescendo, and the sensation of plummeting worsened, as though he was accelerating towards his end, until...

...He was forced awake not so much by the migraine that threatened to split his head in six places, or even the tortured screams around him, as by the intuition that his life was in immediate danger. He forced himself to sit up, and was rewarded with a rush of nausea that hit like a hundred pounds of wet cement. He had the sensation of being on a mad carousel with no one at the controls. The intuition persisted, a potent knife slicing through the veil of darkness and vertigo that clouded his mind. He forced his eyes to stay open, and within moments he could see clearly. And almost immediately wished he couldn't.

He was sitting in what could only have been a menagerie of the macabre. Tens, maybe hundreds of grotesquely malformed creatures swarmed around him, hissing, screaming, spitting at him, flowing, undulating with a shared tension that gave them the aspect of being one unit with the sole purpose of destroying him. One of them was especially close, and was inching closer. It made his skin crawl to look at it. It was a horrible creature that, in better light, may have just barely passed for a scorpion, in the eyes of a schizophrenic surrealist. The air was thick as fog, a miasma of decay and filth so strong he could almost taste it. It was an affront to his faculties, a sensory overload that served to teach him one thing about himself: he at least had a tolerance for the morbid, and an iron-clad stomach to boot.

He struggled to his feet, casting his eyes about warily, looking in vain for an answer to the tumult of questions and images that filled his mind. A roar from behind jolted him, and he spun around just in time to catch a massive lariat that would have ripped his head off on his forearms. He was thrown several yards off his feet, yet found he was coolheaded enough to plot a maneuver to avert a bad fall. He twisted his legs up and around so he landed coiled in a crouch, ready for his assailant's follow up. And there it came, a hulking seven foot monstrosity, charging at him like a runaway freight train, breaking the ground up under its feet. Just as the monster was within range, he exploded upwards and lashed out with a hammer blow that hit home so hard and square he felt his knuckles crack. He'd barely landed when another creature rammed into him from behind so violently he heard his spine crack. As if by reflex, he reached over backwards at his attacker in search of handholds, and found them when his fingers slid into its empty eye sockets. With an almost Herculean effort, he wrenched it over his head and slammed it down on another one that had scuttled in from the left. Hard. He kept his hold on the creature and swung it like an obscene rag doll, knocking out more of the monsters. He was a mad jock at a frat party, and these low-level Hollows (where was that word from? And how did he even know it had levels?) were his piñatas. However, he was fast tiring, and was slowing down. It seemed that for every Hollow he knocked down, four more took its place. He was taking more hits than he was delivering, and was loosing a lot of blood.

He was still swinging valiantly when he saw a brilliant flash somewhere to his left. It flared out in a wave, destroying every single Hollow in its path. He paused to look, and was trying to comprehend the sight when a fist larger than his head knocked him back onto the mad carousel. He was down before he knew it, and was fast loosing consciousness. The last thing he registered before passing out was a roar, more white light, and a figure hidden in darkness looming over him. Then everything faded to black.

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He was lying unconscious on what looked like a beach of gritty black sand that somehow moved and flowed, even in the still wind. His mouth was open, and he was snorting up mother loads of sand. Apart from breathing, he moved about as much as a corpse, and that was exactly what he looked like. The blood from his wounds had long since dried, caking his left eye shut. For hours he lay there under the hot sun until a tiny skull with crab legs and pincers scuttled into his mouth. To the skullcrab, his quivering uvula looked like a tasty meal, and it was about ready to sample it when he suddenly sat up, spitting sand and crab. The critter landed on its back in the sand, clicking its teeth and pincers angrily at him for denying it of a meal. It flipped itself over then scuttled off, clicking all the way, in search of some other meal. He rubbed at his temples, smoothing away the residuary migraine pain, then rubbed his eyes, peeling off the layers of dried blood. He looked around at his surroundings. He was not in the same place as when he first woke up. First, there were no oversized cockroaches from hell screaming in his ear, thankfully. Second, this place was as silent as a mute, except for the clicking skullcrabs and shifting sands. And that was another difference. The sand. He stood up for a better view, and for as far as he could see, there was nothing but sand, black sand all around. He started walking, with no sense of direction or visible destination. He simply felt a need to move.

So he walked. For miles and miles he trekked on under the merciless sun, enduring the risk of heatstroke in an effort to jog his memory, to at least remember something about himself. All he got were fleeting images that were there for a second then were gone, until he registered a peculiar word. "Shinigami." It kept repeating itself, and though he had no idea what it meant, he knew it was something significant. And it seemed to have some kind of association with that other word, "Hollow." He felt strongly that the key to figuring out his identity was somehow tied in with whatever those two words meant. Then he stopped. He sensed he was being watched. He spun around and saw noone. He spun left, then right, then full circle. Still no one. Maybe it was the heat getting to him. He shook his head and kept walking-

-then stopped again. There was a figure about fifteen feet away from him where previously, there'd been no one.

"Hello, Shinigami," the figure before him said. It was that of a man. He was pale-skinned, tall, white-haired, and wore loose-fitting white clothes. At his side hung a black short sword with no pommel and a white edge. Other than the sword, he looked like an advertisement for white.

"Who are you? And why'd you call me that?" He felt cautious. Weirdly dressed men who knew words from his past were new to him. Hell, everything was new to him. Literally.

"What, Shinigami? You don't even remember that much?" The man looked incredulous. "Well, we certainly have our work cut out for us," he mumbled to himself. "Look down at your clothes," he said.

For the first time, he looked at what he was wearing. Loose-fitting black robes. Just like he'd seen in those flashes of memory. On reflex, he reached behind his head, where his sword's hilt stuck out and-. Hey. He didn't have a sword. So why was he reaching for one? "It's called muscle memory," the man said, "And from the looks of it, it's the only memory you've got, my friend." He chuckled softly under his breath.

"Do you know who- what I am? Or what I'm doing here? Can you help me?"

The man looked up at him with a wry half-smile. "Well, if I can't, we'll be in quite bit of trouble now, won't we?" He pointed at him with the index and little fingers of his right hand, muttered some words under his breath, then pointed downwards. The sand beneath them gave, and they were plummeting down a pipe to God -and the man in white- alone knew where. They slid down the meandering pipe, speeding faster and faster toward the end until they shot out of the pipe's mouth and landed, the man on his feet, the Shinigami on his rear, in a huge, expansive cavern. The Shinigami looked around at his surroundings. For one, everything was white. And all around, there were more people in (surprise, surprise) white clothes looking at him. He glanced up at the man standing over him. The man smiled, then extended his hand to him.

"Hello, Kurosaki Ichigo. My name is Palido. Welcome to Purgatory, and Apenado headquarters."

===End Chapter One