I'm not completely certain where this come from.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

It started when Kurosaki Ichigo was seven, Misaki noticed. What happened would be something like this:

Late at night, when thunderstorms roared and crackled, and the children were all supposed to be asleep, there would be a strangled cry from her only son's room. A few minutes later, he's bare feet raced down the hallway and burst into his parent's room. Sometimes they were awake, sometimes they weren't. Regardless, he would jump into their bed, sobbing his eyes out. By now the parents were definitely awake. They would try to comfort him, trying to calm him down enough to understand what got him so shaken.

It wasn't that he was scared of thunderstorms. It was nightmares. Horrible nightmares that had Misaki and Isshin very concerned for their little boy.

Because little boys weren't supposed to have nightmares about battlefields and comrades, people Ichigo had never even met before, ripped apart by masked, heartless monsters and madmen and flashes of purple.

It was terrifying for all three of them. The monsters mostly matched the appearance of Hollows, but some of the monsters in Ichigo's dreams didn't make sense. For one, there weren't supposed to be partially masked, humanoid Hollows running around. Because those sounded like arrancar. And Misaki could swear up and down that there definitely hadn't been any arrancar anywhere near Karakura, ever.

The madman in Ichigo's nightmares concerned Isshin. There was one description, only mentioned once, that reminded Isshin a lot of the fifth captain of the Gotei 13, Aizen Sousuke. That didn't make sense.

One day, when Ichigo and the girls were in school, the two visited Urahara Kisuke. After they explained the situation, Urahara had sobered and stared into his tea. He didn't speak for several minutes. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak, but a pop and a loud crash and a shouting boy's voice interrupted him. There were more crashes and now a man's voice was apologizing and telling someone that-for-god's-sake-stop-swinging-that-bloody-bat- all-over-the-place-I'm-not-fixing-what-you-break-o h-screw-this, then silence.

The Kurosaki parents regarded the door to the back rooms with raised eyebrows. A white fan covered most of Urahara's face as he turned to also look at the opening.

Another loud pop.

"Well, this is very convenient…I was about to say that I might have an idea, and I just remembered something. There's someone I know that might be able to help your son. I'll contact him, and he can probably fix the situation soon."

"Who is this person?"

"He just arrived. Now if you would excuse me, I need to catch me before he runs off again to Kami knows where he lives."

Misaki nodded and stood up. Isshin regarded Urahara's retreating back for longer, then sighed and followed his wife. He trusted Urahara could help them, it wouldn't be the first time he helped the couple.

They never saw who exactly the mystery man was. But the next time a thunderstorm rolled through the town at night, Ichigo slept soundly with no nightmares.

Well, the afore mentioned sentence isn't exactly correct. Not the nightmares, the man. Isshin saw him twelve years later on a fateful spring evening for just a few minutes. Not that he knew this was the man that helped save his son. His son's absences were more at the front of his mind.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Ichigo's about ...actually, he's about five ... whoops... when his parents go to Urahara. By then certain parties were aware of each other.

I think I need to stop writing about Ichigo for a bit.

Au revoir

~dorandsugar