How long has it been? Urahara's artificial sky doesn't keep time.

He's lost track of the number of encroachments. That's not good, is it?

There's about half of his chain of fate left. He glares dully at the hateful thing. He wishes it was gone. No, wait, he doesn't mean that. As long as it remains, he still has time left.

Time for what?

He gets up with a groan, slowly so his legs won't give under him. He slumps against the rock wall of the pit, its uneven surface digging into his back.

Hollow.

Help me.

At least laugh at how pathetic I am, come on.

He squeezes his eyes shut. Is this how weak he is? Can't he do anything by himself? But it's not just that, it's the haunting void inside his soul that he can't bear. He usually wishes the hollow would leave him alone, except for now when it's gone and he'd give anything…

Most people get along perfectly fine without a psychopath voice in their head. What does it say about his sanity, him acting like this?

He shakes his head. What's he doing feeling sorry for himself? People are depending on him. He's gotta survive.

He straightens up and plants his feet in front of Tessai. The man is sitting cross-legged on the ground with his hands clasped together in a sign. He lifts his head to frown at Ichigo. "Are you going to keep trying?"

"Until you let me go."

Tessai shakes his head. "Your persistence is admirable, but you won't reach me like that."

"Try me!"

Ichigo charges at him. He doesn't get within ten feet before he crashes into a glowing barrier that appears out of nowhere in his path. He dodges past it and is immediately met with another. He kicks it as hard as he can, the impact jarring his leg and sending him staggering back. The barrier doesn't even tremble. He shakes it off and rams it with his shoulder.

Reeling back with a scream, he slams his head into it. Pain flashes through his skull, his vision swimming in and out. He slumps against the barrier, staring at the droplets of blood splashed over it.

"It's time you stopped," Tessai says. "You're only hurting yourself."

"Like I would rather be turned into a hollow!" Ichigo screams near hysterically. "No thanks!"

He tries to charge forward again but collapses to his knees before he takes a single step. He can feel the dull sting of a dozen or so scrapes and bruises across his body. Most of them, he doesn't even know how he got. His breath claws at his throat.

He's not giving up. He's got three days. Tessai has got to let down his guard sometime. Heck, he's got to sleep sometime.

But how much of the three days does he really have left?

His eyes flick to the top of the pit where Urahara's sitting, but his pride won't let him ask how long it's been.

His cuts sting as sweat drips into them. His clothes are a dust-smeared mess. He picks himself up and limps over to a wall, his feet barely leaving the ground, and slumps down against it, leaning his head against his knees with a sound like a whimper. He stares unseeingly at the ground.

How much time has passed? His sisters and his friends must miss him by now. All he's left them with, even Chad and Orihime, are vague excuses. What if they never see him again?

That can't happen.

Get up.

He stands and charges at Tessai again.

"You've gotten awfully quiet down there, Kurosaki-san."

Ichigo glares up at Urahara balefully.

"You want to holler something so we know you're not a hollow?"

"When I get out of here," Ichigo says in between ragged breaths, "I'll rip out your entrails with my bare hands. Does that count?"

"Hm." Urahara flips out his fan. "It makes me a lot more reluctant to let you out of there."

Ichigo scoffs and drops his gaze back down to the wall in front of him. "I'm not giving up," he says quietly.

"Is that so?"

Ichigo bows his head. "I'm not…" But he can't even fool himself.

Urahara is silent for a moment. "Are you aware of how much time has passed, Kurosaki-san?"

Ichigo glares at the ground, clenching his teeth.

"You aren't, are you? It's all too easy to lose track of time in this place." He sighs. "Well, I'll just tell you. You've been down there for nearly seventy hours."

Ichigo lifts his head. He can't feel any alarm at Urahara's words. Maybe he's just too tired to process. "I have two hours left?"

"Mm, I don't know. Seventy-two hours is an estimate."

"You don't know how much time I have left?"

He looks down at his soul chain. There's a few inches of it left. He's gotta still have time.

Bracing himself against the wall, he staggers to his feet. "Let me go."

"Boss," Tessai says, "do you really plan on going through with this?"

Urahara presses his lips together. The look in his eyes answers.

Ichigo straightens up. "No. Dammit, I won't let you do this to me!"

Trying to take a step forward, he blinks when he falls to his knees. The pain he's gotten so accustomed to over the past days stabs through his chest again. But this isn't the same. It burns like poison through his veins and makes his every breath agony, like nothing he's ever felt, like his nightmares and worse.

"Stop."

He stares at the chain. All the links have become mouths that rip at his chest.

"No, no, don't do this!"

There's no response from the two watching him. The two who did this to him.

"Urahara!" he roars.

Your fault. You're trying to hurt me. You're trying to kill me—I won't let you! I'll destroy you myself!

He can't breathe, can't think in the face of the agony that's tearing apart his heart and shredding his soul and doing its best to destroy all that is Kurosaki Ichigo. He's fought it for too long. Can't he end it all?

No, not like this. It will not end like this!

A white liquid chokes his throat and forms into the all too familiar sensation of a mask across his face. His thoughts evade his grasp. Who is he? Why is he still resisting?

There's only darkness now, consuming his vision, ensnaring him in its depths. If it can take the pain away, he welcomes it.

Sunlight, insistently striking his closed eyelids, calls Ichigo awake. He opens his eyes to an unfamiliar scenery.

Glass-filled skyscrapers tower around him, stretching sideways to the limits of the horizon. Sunbeams rebound off their windows. He finds himself lying on one. No, he's lying on the side of one.

All this he couldn't care about. He can't spare a thought for anything besides the pain insistently gnawing at his chest, piercing all the way to the core of his being and pulling him apart piece by piece.

He'll do anything to make it stop. Who did this to him? Who does he have to kill? They should suffer too, as much as he has.

Soft footsteps cross the building, getting closer. Ichigo doesn't look. He curls up on the surface of the cold concrete, clutching his chest. A choked whimper comes from his throat.

"Well, aren't you in a sorry state," a familiar voice says, deceptively softly.

Ichigo looks up, blinking to focus his sight. He stares into the same piercing yellow eyes that have haunted his dreams ever since that October night so long ago. They're the eyes of someone with the same face as him, the same hair but white, wearing a shihakushou with colors reversed.

So this is him. The shadow in the dark. The monster in the mirror.

"Help me," Ichigo says.

The hollow scoffs. "Begging? That doesn't suit you."

Ichigo narrows his eyes at him. "You—you never came. Couldn't you hear me calling to you? Didn't you care?"

Something softens in the spirit's eyes. A shadow of pain flickers across his face. "I couldn't answer."

"It's all the same to you, isn't it?" Ichigo growls, glaring up at him weakly. "You're a hollow. You probably wanted this all along. You want my body."

The hollow bares his teeth in some parody of a smile. "Are you fucking with me? If I want something, I'll take it for myself, and someone as pathetic as you couldn't stop me." His steps approach, drawing right next to Ichigo. Ichigo struggles upright. In a single swift movement, the hollow leans down and grabs him by his shirt, dragging him up to his face.

"Let's get this straight." The soft hiss of his voice belies the threat in his eyes. "I'm not a hollow."

"What do you mean?" Ichigo says. He thinks back to what the spirit said to him during his fight with Renji. The genuine rage in his voice back then matches the look in his eyes.

The hollow stares down at him coldly. He throws Ichigo back against the building and stands, turning away. "Time's running out."

Ichigo pushes himself up to a sitting position. "Aren't you going to answer me? Who are you?"

A deep tremor runs through the building with a rumble that resonates in his bones, like a sound on the edge of his hearing. Buildings in the distance start to crumble, pieces falling away in eerie silence.

"This goes on, this world that represents your soul will be destroyed," the hollow says. "So you better find your shinigami powers in, oh… now would be great."

"I don't know how to do that!" Ichigo says.

A groan shakes the building under him, followed by a sickening lurch. Whatever strange gravity passes in this world suddenly flips. Ichigo shouts in alarm and his fingers scrabble against the surface of the building, nails clawing painfully at rough concrete until he reaches a window ledge his hand can catch. He looks down to find himself dangling a hundred meters above the ground. What, is this supposed to be something funny?

His hollow just stands in midair above him, watching him with a calculating amusement in his eyes.

The shaking intensifies. The buildings around him are collapsing, breaking down into countless white boxes. The same begins to happen to the one he's on, high above him.

"It's starting," the hollow says. "You better stop fooling around." He waves a hand around. "Within one of these boxes is a blade. My blade. Find it before this world completely crumbles, or…" He chuckles dryly. "You won't want to be around for what happens next."

Ichigo looks at the hundreds or thousands of white boxes, all identical, raining from the sky around him. "How? That's impossible!"

"Too bad!" A foot comes down on his hand. He flinches and his fingers lose their grip on the ledge. He finds himself falling.

"Whine, whine, whine, that's all you do!" The hollow leers down at him, perched on the ledge. "I can't wait to see you fail pathetically and become a hollow!"

"You bastard!" Ichigo yells.

"I bet you don't have the guts to prove me wrong!" the hollow yells back.

Ichigo doesn't hit the ground. A dark rift in the world opens up under him and a cold ocean engulfs him. He gasps and water fills his throat. After a moment of panic, he finds out he can breathe fine.

Too many boxes to count fill the water around him. How is he supposed to find one out of all of these? He couldn't do it if he had hours, but he suspects he has less than minutes remaining.

Think. You can't just check all of these. There has to be a better way. Think!

Reiatsu sensing? He can't sense anything different from the boxes and the shaking of the world is making it impossible to concentrate. What if he visualizes reiraku?

He reaches out and dozens upon dozens of ribbons materialize in a white flurry around him. He picks out the red one easily and snatches it out of the water, clamping his fist around it. "Got it!"

He yanks the box to him and its lid falls open, revealing the hilt of a blade. He realizes it's his blade.

"You actually found it."

Ichigo turns to see the hollow standing behind him. Despite the taunting tone in his voice, his smile is tempered by a softer edge and there's something that might be approval in his eyes.

"You don't have to act so surprised," Ichigo says.

The hollow snorts. His expression shifts into something like panic, the smile vanishing from his face. "Why are you dawdling? Pull the damn sword out!"

Ichigo makes a frantic grab for the hilt. As he draws the sword free, a bright flash fills his vision and everything disappears around him.

Ichigo blinks awake. What's going on? Where is he?

His arms are free. The air is filled with smoke and dust and the broken remnants of a kidou spell. This painfully familiar sensation—there's a mask across his face?

He fights his way through the smoke and collapses to his knees, coughing and gasping. His hand goes to his chest, feeling his heart beating way too fast but no hole. He stares down at his hands. Human. He's wearing a shihakushou again, his sheath a comforting weight against his back.

Looking up, he sees Jinta and Ururu frozen in front of him, tense and poised to attack.

"Hi," Ichigo groans. "Don't kill me."

Jinta gapes at him. "You survived!"

He almost sounds disappointed, the little brat.

"Congratulations!" Ichigo twitches as Urahara's cheery voice rings out. "You've successfully completed this task. I knew you'd do it!"

"Can it, hat-and-clogs!" Ichigo whips his sword—still broken—out of its sheath and points it at Urahara.

"My, my, don't be so testy!" the shopkeeper says. "Since you survived, it's time we move on to your next task."

"Does the next task involve killing you?" Ichigo growls. "Cause if not, it's gonna have to wait."

"I like that spirit!" Urahara says, but there's a sly edge to his smile. "If you come at me with that sort of attitude, you just might succeed. This lesson's quite simple. Use that zanpakutou to knock off my—"

He has to duck back to avoid Ichigo's sword lashing out for his head, edge barely an inch from his face. "…my hat."

"My bad," Ichigo says. "I thought you said your head."

A coy smile flicks over Urahara's face. "A good first attempt," he says, dusting at his hat. "But I won't just be standing here." He raises his cane to arm height, grabbing the shaft and slowly drawing a thin steel blade from it. "It's starting now, Kurosaki-san. Don't waver. Keep your heart and blade steady. Otherwise, you will die."

He raises the sword, blade down. "Awaken, Benihime."

Thank you for reading. Please review! Reviews are the best.