CHAPTER 3: This is character development, right?

"I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel," Ichigo shouts as he shoots awake. Within a few seconds of doing so he notices a not insignificant amount of pain, mostly around the front of his head. Looking around he sees bits of something fluffy all over the kitchen. Picking one up, he looks closer.

"It's...bread."

"Hey," Isshin calls from somewhere outside the kitchen, drawing steadily closer, "Has anyone seen Ich-What the h*ll happened in here?"

"Dad!" Ichigo says, "I can explain. There was a butterfly that went into my closet and then I got stabbed and there was this huge monster with a hole-"

"Ichigo, if you're going make something up at least make it believable."

"Dad!" Karin calls from the living room, "A hobo broke in again...and also drew a runic circle in chicken blood on the living room floor."

"D*mn hobos and their blood rituals," Isshin says walking to the living room.

"And planted my fingerprints everywhere."

"He's not listening to a word I say," Ichigo thinks to himself, then his eyes widen with realization, "Is this what Karin feels like?"

"Hey," Isshin calls, snapping him back to awareness, "Do you know where the mop is?

"Huh?" Ichigo hesitates, "You're...not mad? No dropkicks to the face? No headlocks until I'm unconscious? No ironing boards-"

"Okay, I get it! Jesus. I'm trying to be a better person. And that starts by forgiving you for getting blackout drunk, wrecking our kitchen, and wasting a month's worth of bread."

"Oh," Ichigo says as he follows his father to the living room.

"You're still cleaning this up, though," Isshin says, popping his head back into the kitchen.

Twenty Minutes Later

"Hey, Dad?" Ichigo says, walking into the living room, "What should I do with all these bags?"

"Just throw 'em in your closet."

"I'm telling you, that's going to come back to bite us-Woah. What happened here?"

"Let me guess," Karin says, gesturing to the giant hole in the wall, "I did this with my vampire powers?"

"No. You're not a vampire."

"Honestly, I- Wait, what?"

"You say you're not a vampire, so you're not a vampire."

"Finally. Thank the dark ones."

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

"Take this," Isshin says, and Ichigo dives to the ground, "Come on, son. It's just an envelope. Give this to your friend Orihime."

"She's not my friend," Ichigo responds, taking the envelope, but Isshin has already walked away. Wow. I guess Ichigo gets that from his father as well.

Karakura High School: Hallway

"I'm so hungry," Tatsuki Arisawa, one of Ichigo's schoolmates says, clutching her stomach.

"Then go eat something," her companion responds.

"I can't. Someone bought all the bread."

"All the bread?"

"All the bread."

"You know you can eat things other than bread, right?"

"I've told you this a hundred times, Orihime," Tatsuki complains.

"Oh, yeah. Your diet or whatever."

"It's not a diet! I was cursed by a witch doctor in the South Caribbean last month. I can't eat anything other than bread or ghosts will try to kill me."

"You never told me anything like-Wait, when did you have time to go to the Caribbean? When did you have the money to go to the Caribbean? You still owe me-"

Before the conversation can go any further, Ichigo walks up to Orihime and hands her an envelope.

"My father told me to give this to you," he says, walking away.

"Oh. I actually don't need this for another month," she says, looking down at it, "but-"

When she looks up again Ichigo is already gone. And so is Tatsuki.

Karakura High School: Classroom

"Are you okay?" asks Keigo Asano, one of Ichigo's classmates who I will mostly ignore because I can't make anything funny out of his name, "I heard a hobo ran a truck through your living room wall and stabbed you seven times."

"Something like that, and I'm fine."

Next to Asano sits Mizuiro Kojima whose character will be replaced with a bunch of Boktai references because subversion of expectation is the lynchpin of comedy.

"Need help cleaning up?" asks yet another classmate, Yasutora Sa-Good God why is he so tall? Is this a village of giants or something? This sucks! I hate being short! That's it, from now on your narrator is six-and-a-half feet tall. There can't possibly be anyone taller than that.

Ichigo refuses his offer, but before anyone can ask why he's turning down help from a human bulldozer, someone taps his shoulder.

"Hi, I'm Rukia," the Shinigami from last night says, sticking her hand out for Ichigo to shake.

Sometime later, while class is going, Rukia rises from the desk she's sitting at and begins leaving the classroom. At the door, she gestures for Ichigo to follow.

"Excuse me-" the teacher starts.

"X equals +/-7," Rukia says.

"Rukia, this is History," Ichigo tells her.

"You're history if you don't come here," she says.

"Fine, whatever," he relents, rising from the desk and ignoring the teacher's calls.

Karakura High School: Rooftop

"Okay, what do you want?" Ichigo asks as they arrive on the rooftop.

"You were only supposed to take half of my power," Rukia says, getting straight to the point.

"I didn't take anything. As I recall, you stabbed me-

"Semantics, Ichigo."

"What's semantic about 'You stabbed me'?"

"..."

"You don't even know what that word means, do you? You just saw it in a YouTube comments section argument."

"Give me a break. I had to learn 150 years of living world culture in one night!" Rukia exclaims, "Also, what the h*ll is a 'YouTube'?"

"Oh, right. It's 2001."

"The point is, you were only supposed to have half. You have it all."

"I don't see how that's my fault. Maybe it's the product of some latent guilt over past events that we don't know about yet. Or maybe Shinigami are just bad at math."

"What...was that?" Rukia asks.

"I said, maybe you're bad at math."

"Well," Rukia stumbles, but then gets back on track, "Until I get my power back you are responsible for my duties as a Shinigami."

"Yeah, I don't think so," Ichigo says, turning away.

"Oh, I wasn't asking," Rukia says, donning a red fingerless glove with a skull insignia. With Ichigo's back turned, Rukia surges forward, slamming his face into the ground.

"What was that f-" Ichigo rises, rubbing the back of his head until he sees his body slumped over, "No! Do you have any idea how long it took to get back in there?"

"Yes, I do," Rukia responds, "I was there."

Flashback

"Don't you dare suggest stabbing me again."

"Fine, fine," Rukia says, "Let's go back to the living room and we'll work from there."

Rukia goes down the steps ahead of Ichigo and by the time he arrives there she's staring wide-eyed at empty space.

"What's wrong?" Ichigo asks

"Your body," she starts, "It's...gone."

"My body is gone?! Where?!"

"I don't know," Rukia says, "Ichigo, we have to find it."

"Of course we do. It's my body!"

"No, you don't understand. I could get fired."

"Oh no!" Ichigo exaggerates, "You'll have to find another job. Guess what? My body's gone! It could be in Cancun right now, missing a kidney!"

Unbeknownst to Ichigo, being fired has a very different meaning in the Soul Society. Before their argument can escalate, they hear a grinding noise in the kitchen. Rushing through the door they find Ichigo's body on the floor of the kitchen, dropped into a crouch with it's hands tucked back into its underarms. It walks along the floor in this condition, head bobbing back and forth with every step.

"We found it!" Rukia says with no small amount of relief as the body flaps its arms and jumps up onto the counter.

"What's it doing?' Ichigo asks as his body spies a bag of bread and immediately jumps onto it, slamming its head into the counter with a crack.

"I hope that was the counter and not my nose."

It lifts its head and does it again.

"Stop!" Ichigo yells, "That's my body!"

Completely without warning, it tears into the bread with such primal ferocity that I can't actually describe it here or this would no longer be a T-Rated story.

"Dear God," Rukia says, as the carnage continues, a grinding noise filling the kitchen, "I didn't know the human body was capable of that kind of horror."

"Make it stop!" Ichigo says, "Make it stop!"

"No way in h*ll am I getting in there," Rukia shoots back as the assault rises to a fever pitch.

Then, just before I run out of ways to dance around describing it everything stops, Ichigo's body slumping over on the bag.

"Okay, it's stopped," Rukia tells Ichigo, "Try walking into it."

"I don't know if I want that body anymore," Ichigo says, uncovering his eyes, "Can't you get me another one?"

"Just go," she says, pushing Ichigo toward the body.

"Wait, don't make me-"

Ichigo disappears into his body, but doesn't get up.

"I guess he stays unconscious."

Flashback end

"So that's how-Where'd you go?" Rukia asks. A brief look around reveals that Ichigo is nowhere to be seen.

"I guess I'll have to figure something out myself for now," Rukia says, producing her Denreishinki to check her orders.

She heads toward the public park, not realizing, or perhaps trying not to think about how Ichigo's body had left as well.

Karakura Public Park

Arriving at the park, Rukia finds a Hollow looming over the soul of a child.

"Sai!" she yells, pointing at the Hollow as she dashes toward the child. The Kidō doesn't work, but it does grab the Hollow's attention long enough for her to get the child away.

"...rop!" Rukia hears as she places herself between the soul and the Hollow, trying to think of a solution.

"What?" she asks

"I said, 'elbow drop'!" Ichigo repeats, falling out of the sky and onto the Hollow, shattering its mask.

"You're supposed to use a Zanpakuto, Ichigo! You can't just-"

"I love this job!" Ichigo says, springing up "It's just like beating up kids except the demons in my closet don't torture me at night."

"What was that last part?"

"Huh? Oh. Maybe things are different in the Soul Society, but around here, beating up kids is considered-"

"No, not that. Never mind. Let's just deal with this," Rukia says, gesturing to the soul.

"How could someone hurt an innocent child?"

"What makes you so sure he's innocent?" Rukia says, gesturing to the soul, its eyes glowing with an ancient light, "Or a child."

"Look at him. He couldn't hurt anyone."

"I am the god of exact and specific angles," the soul says in a wizened voice, "Patron of protractors and the creator of trigonometry."

"Surely he's killed a few bugs at least," Rukia offers.

"Probably, but they don't have souls, do they?"

"Yes. Everything has a soul."

"Wait, so..." Ichigo considers this, "So the vegans were right?!"

"No, they're wrong too. Plants also have souls."

"Then how is anyone supposed to be a good person? You just don't eat?"

"There is no 'being a good person', Ichigo. Everyone kills a bowl of petunias every now and then. You just have to hope yours isn't the one that reincarnates into a giant bat monster."

"...Are you alright?"

"Yeah, my family owns a big library."

"That's not what I asked, but okay. So can I just do the Konsō thing?" Ichigo asks, gesturing to the soul, "What about the stamp you were talking about last night?"

"Release me, mortal, and I will endow your bloodline with power beyond imagination," the soul intones, echoes of ancient power reverberating through each word.

"It should be fine. You're new so you'll have a grace period until the renewal letter comes in the mail."

With this knowledge, Ichigo presses the bottom of his blade to the soul's forehead.

"The contract is sealed," it says as it disappears.

Orihime's Apartment

Opening the front door, Orihime walks into her apartment, envelope in hand, and shuts the door behind her. She goes up the steps to the second floor, walks into her bedroom and opens a drawer. Rummaging through it for a second, she produces a notebook and a pen.

Orihime sits on the bed and pages through the book until she finds 'Kurosaki', then crosses it out before paging forward to cross out the next instance of it. As she pages backward to look at some other names, her older brother Sora watches through her window. And no, this one isn't a Kingdom Hearts reference either. His shoes aren't nearly large enough. Sora is too distracted by his observation to notice space warping around him as Hollows appear on either side of him. With their target surrounded, the Hollows begin exerting their spiritual pressure.

"Hey, kid," one says to Sora, "There's a séance going on down the street. All the cool kids are going to be there."

"...All the cool kids?" Sora asks, hesitantly.

CHAPTER 3 END

Everyone thinks of Metal Gear and Silent Hill when they hear Kojima. Poor Boktai never even gets a mention outside of a cameo in Battle Network 4.