Well, I definitely did not reach the amount of chapters I was hoping to get by the end of my small break of Power of Three. I blame getting distracted by a LOT of different things. Hopefully I can get one or two more chapters done quickly after this comes out. If I am in the middle of writing a chapter and the end of the break hits, I will finish the chapter and post it before I get back on Power of Three.

Anyways, let's get going with the chapter.

The ghouls were in awe of how Ichigo was able to get the crowd pumped up from just a single motion. It really spoke of how popular he was with the fans. For the crowd to become even louder than they were previously also told them that he must have been a really good athlete. They wanted to get a good look at his face but his face and hair were covered by his signature yakuza mask, his usual pair of goggles, and a black beanie as seen on the Jumbotron.

"That's him?! Jeez, he's tall!" exclaimed Yugito. She was right, even from their position at the bottom of the hill they could tell he towered over the event official beside him, which was evidenced further by the large screen. The teen had to be 6'5" easily, maybe a little taller, but there was no question that he was most likely going to be among the tallest students, maybe even the tallest, at Monster High.

The cocoa-skinned purplenette whistled in amazement. "No kidding, he's massive. It must be from his combined heritage," she pointed out. "I think he's starting his run now."

Sure enough, the Kurosaki teen had pushed off from the top and was slowly gaining speed in his descent towards the large ramp downhill. He approached the jump in no time and crouched in preparation for his takeoff into the air. He achieved liftoff and started his trick by initiating a Seatbelt grab and beginning his rotation in the air.

The crowd held their breaths, as did the eight visitors, as they waited for the snowboarder to stick the landing. Seconds ticked by as Ichigo continued to spin midair and descended back towards the powdered ground, landing cleanly as he completed a Triple Rodeo 1260 Seatbelt with no stumbles or hiccups and boarded down the last stretch of the slope with his arms outstretched in victory, stopping at the end zone where the fans had gone nuts after he had finished his run.

Unstrapping himself from his board, Ichigo looked to the Jumbotron and patiently waited for his score to show on the screen. The judges calculated his score and posted it on the screen, which showed a score of 93.73, good enough to give him the lead on his first run by about 2 points higher than the competitor in second place. He pumped his fist when he saw the score and walked to the break area for the competitors to wait for his next and final run. Since Ichigo was the ninth rider out of twelve to compete, there were still three riders that had not completed their first run, and once those three had gone, the final series of runs would start and the best score from each rider's two runs would be counted as their final score.

"Woah! And I thought he was good from seeing his videos, but from what I saw, he's on another skill level entirely." Nel complimented the teen on his skills, her friends were inclined to agree with her, seeing this in person was a really different experience than viewing clips on a computer screen.

Anko commented, "I'll have to thank Ichigo for inviting us to an event like this, though I really want to see his face because Bloodgood never gave us a picture of what he looked like and we couldn't see it on the screen since he had his entire head covered." She then got a saucy smirk on her face. "I hope he's hot! Then I'll really want to thank him properly by—" An embarrassed Fu then interrupted her train of thought, stopping the girl from continuing her very suggestive sentence.

"Anko! Really?!" the mint-haired teen yelled with a prominent blush staining her cheeks. Konan, Tia, Nel, and Yugito also had a fierce shade of red painted across their faces, Samui, true to her nature as an ice queen, only had a light blush on her normally stoic face, but Yoruichi had a catlike grin on her face while having no shame whatsoever as she pictured what Anko was going to say.

"Oh, is Fu embarrassed by what I was going to say? It's not that bad, I would've just—"

"ANKO, ENOUGH!" shouted five greatly-embarrassed teenagers, wanting their friend to stop to save themselves from dying of embarrassment. Even the snow woman of the group was turning a darker shade of red as Anko continued to speak.

"Oh fine! Party poopers..." the gorgon mumbled under her breath, ignoring the glares shot at her by the six ghouls for her comment.

The event continued on for the next hour-and-a-half and Ichigo's final run had come and gone, scoring a 97.21 with Ichigo finishing his run with a Triple Rodeo 1440 Japan Air. The last three riders were hitting their final runs, the first snowboarder coming close to Ichigo's final score but just under by a score of .73 to move to second place and the second rider not able to make their score any better, keeping them off of the podium. At the moment, the last rider was at the top of the hill and rushing down towards the jump. He landed his trick, one with a high level of difficulty, though not as cleanly as he would have liked, which would probably cost him the win. It did end up doing so as the judges made their verdict on the last rider's run, only giving him enough to finish in third place.

A group of photographers took photos of the winning trio and the event officials calculated each rider's final position on the leaderboard into points toward qualifying for the season championships. Once they had done what they needed to, the crowd began to disperse to go hang out at some of the local bars while the boarders stayed and talked amongst themselves, unwinding from the intensity of the event.

The ghouls made their way towards the group of boarders and approached them. They noticed the tall teen in black and yellow, whose face was still covered, talking with another snowboarder. Samui tapped him on the shoulder and asked him when he turned around, "Are you Ichigo Kurosaki?" almost falling on her rear when she saw him up close. He was a lot bigger in person, the screen did not do him justice in the size department.

He responded in his usual gruff tone, "Yeah, I'm Ichigo. Who's asking?"

"We're from Monster High, Headmistress Bloodgood sent us to help you out." she replied in turn.

"You're the group from Monster High? I'm guessing you saw the note I had on my door, right?" They nodded. He turned to his fellow snowboarder and told them, "I'll catch you later." and waved goodbye as he grabbed his board and motioned for the girls to follow him to a small restaurant, where they sat down at a large table. A waitress that he was familiar with approached them and asked if they wanted something to drink, Ichigo responded that he wanted a Coke and the girls said they wanted cups of hot chocolate, and she soon came back with the beverages.

After the male Vizard took a sip of his soda when he lifted up the bottom part of his mask and drank from a straw, he asked, "How'd you girls like today's event? "I'll bet it was not what you were expecting, was it?"

"You're right about that, we just arrived to see your first run but I enjoyed the event. But oh my god it felt like I was at a massive party! Are all snowboarding competitions like that?" exclaimed Yoruichi.

Ichigo chuckled, "Not all of them, but the events on the circuit I compete in, which this one was part of that circuit, are a really big deal in the sports world as they are like huge festivals every time we compete because of how the executives run the promotion, I guess you could say they are a concert, party, and slightly smaller version of the X Games combined together into a single league." He had a smirk that couldn't be seen under his mask showing his amusement at blowing their minds. "I never got your names, so would you..." he trailed off at the end, asking the unspoken request of who they were.

The chocolate-skinned beauty let out an awkward laugh. "Oh right, sorry about that. I'm Yoruichi Shihoin, the green-haired girl with the red marking on her face is Nelliel 'Nel' Tu Odelschwanck, my fellow purplenette is Anko Mitarashi, the bluenette with the bun is Konan Senju, the tanned blonde is Tia Halibel, the werecat is Yugito Nii, the other blonde is Samui Yotsuki, and the mothwoman is Fu Kabutomushi." she introduced her friends who greeted Ichigo politely.

"Nice to meet you, ladies." the yellow-eyed teen greeted in response. He took off his beanie first, then his goggles and facemask at the same time, baring his face to the ghouls for the first time. "As I said before, I'm Ichigo Kurosaki." he said with a mischievous grin showing shark-like teeth, slipping off his heavy snow jacket that hid his muscular arms.

The eight women started drooling slightly at his appearance with a single thought in mind. 'Oh my ghoul! He is absolutely gore-geous!' each of them collectively gushed in their minds.

The male teenager was certainly handsome and he could have mistaken for a model for monsters if one did not know who he was beforehand. The spiky locks of hair he possessed were styled in a spiky undercut with the sides buzzed into a fade. In addition, Ichigo had a few piercings that gave him a punkish, primal look. He had a silver ring through his left eyebrow and a small silver hoop earring in each of his ear lobes. Instead of detracting from his good looks, they made him more attractive. The ghouls could also see some part of tribal tattoo-like markings on his upper chest that stretched to his neck. To them, Ichigo looked like he was a ghoul's dream bad boy.

They got so lost in their thoughts that they didn't notice him trying to get their attention for about ten seconds. "Hey! Ghouls? Are you still there?" He quickly snapped his fingers, which got them out of their daydreaming. "You kind of spaced out there for a couple of seconds. All of you were drooling and mumbling a little as well."

Fu chuckled sheepishly, "Yeah, I guess we did. Sorry about that." He waved it off, dismissing it as nothing to worry about. "So what's it like being a snowboarder who gets to compete at a high level?" she asked.

"It's awesome, I've been snowboarding for a long time and making videos of my stunts for a while now but I have also hoped to make it to the world stage as while I'm known across Scare-merica, I want to become a household name across the entire winter sports world and compete in competitions involving athletes from all over the globe. I have wanted to go to Monster High because I had heard good things about the school but never had the chance to take a break from competitions, forcing me to go to the local academy for monsters for my first year of high school. Now though, I have the chance to go and I can still board when I have the time." he explained.

The snow woman gave a small smile in response to his praise of their school. "I think you'll enjoy it once you get adjusted to meeting monsters like us, Ichigo."

"It will definitely be easier to do so if all the monsters at Monster High are as nice as you ghouls. Thanks for coming out here to meet me, I appreciate it," he nodded. "It's been kind of difficult to deal with much of the nobles, they want me under their thumb to keep a leash on me and control me since they believe me to have tainted blood from my hybrid status and that the only thing I'd be good for would be an attack dog under their command that would undertake suicidal tasks. Luckily, the military doesn't care about my scare-itage since they know the nobles are close-minded while they care more about if you can fight or not rather than your class or blood. Many of their higher-ups know me pretty well and have tried to protect me from the nobles' influence, but the nobles in our government were recently able to sneak around their backs and made a decree about involving my future, and while the Head Captain was able to run damage control and keep it in my favor and prevent it from spiraling out of hand, he had to concede something to them so they would get off my case. It was a time deadline." His sigh at the end of his sentence showed how fed up he was with the nobles of the Soul Reaper community, the ghouls noticed this and wondered what exactly had him so upset.

"What was the decree?" asked the bluenette fallen angel. He grimaced at the question like someone had kicked his dog as he took a drink from his glass.

"I'd rather not talk about it until we know each other better. You ghouls are nice but I just met all of you. I don't talk about something sensitive with others if I don't know them well enough. Though I would like to become friends with all of you, if you ghouls are okay with that."

All of them smiled at his question. "We'd like that." said Tia to the Vizard, who grinned in response.

Their conversation lasted for another few hours before they finished their drinks and paid the bill because of the sun starting to dip from the sky. Ichigo asked them if they were staying at a hotel and they said they were and would meet up tomorrow with him at the airport since all of them were on the same flight to New Salem and he still had some last minute packing for his luggage. They bid each other farewell for the day and departed for the hotel while their new friend left for his house.

The girls drove back to the hotel and entered their connecting rooms, ready to spend the rest of the day at the hotel relaxing and eating dinner at its restaurant. They sat around their rooms for a while using their iCoffins and texting their classmates back at Monster High, talking with each other, or doing something else to pass the time. Around eight in the evening, they headed down to the main floor and ate dinner, going back up to the rooms for the rest of the night after finishing their meals.

They chatted some more and Ichigo soon came up in the conversation. "What did you think about Ichigo, ghouls?" asked Nel to her friends.

"He's a really nice guy, definitely someone I can get along with," Yugito said. "He's passionate about snowboarding and enjoys it a lot, but he seems to have a burden on his shoulders that I think relates to what he said about the nobles he's fighting with."

Yoruichi piped up, "From what Ichigo told us about himself, it sounds like he doesn't have a lot of friends. I really want to get to know him better so I can change that for him." A catlike grin spread across her lips that spoke of her mischievous intentions. "Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's drop dead gore-geous and probably doesn't have a ghoulfriend, I could just have him for myself if none of you ghouls snatch him up first."

"Yoruichi..." Samui warned the violet-haired ghoul. "We just met him, and while I admit he may be good boyfriend material, I'm not going to do that to him. Regardless of whether or not I want to date him in the future, Ichigo's a great guy and not arm candy and we should not treat him like that." 'Though like she said, I do want to know him more and maybe, just maybe, become an item if he wants to.' the snow woman said to herself. "I think he's going through a lot right now and I do not want to hurt someone we just became friends with. Please don't do that to him."

The golden-eyed teenager held her hands up in a placating manner. "I know, I know, I was just saying he's very handsome and someone I'd want to date." Yoruichi looked at the clock. "It's getting late, we have a long flight ahead of us and need to meet up with Ichigo at the airport tomorrow." She changed into her night clothes and crawled into bed. The rest of her friends followed suit a little bit after her and tucked in for the night in their respective beds.

But one thought that got initiated by Yoruichi's comment kept going through their heads as they drifted into the land of dreams, 'Would Ichigo really be someone I would want to date?'

And finished. Please read and review, and no flaming.

I'm sorry for the nearly two month long wait for this chapter, I know that one of the distractions from working on this was my little piece for the challenge I mentioned in the last chapter, Vessel of Burned Rubber. I probably won't do something like it again if it takes away from my time for my projects, it took up too much of my attention and I should have just worked on this story. My bad.

Crash out.