The kid wasn't dead.

The kid... was dead.

One or the other.

Ichigo was usually good at telling ghosts apart from their living counterparts. Even ignoring the chain dangling out every dead spirit's chest, they also had a distinctive casual lack of regard for such minor physical obstructions as walls, cars, subways, collapsing buildings. People. That last was the major indicator, more than anything else: a man who, at least from the back, looked utterly normal would be standing in the middle of the highway between lanes and not a single driver would even look at him, a favor which he would return with perfect candidness. They were desperate, also; some of them were better at hiding it, but spirits in general were constantly anxious. Ichigo'd asked several people about it, but all they could say was that they felt vulnerable and exposed without knowing why.

In other words, ghosts carried plenty of peculiarities that set them apart from the living. These traits came in varying degrees of severity, but the commonality was that all ghosts carried all of them. They didn't mix-and-match.

So he was having a hard time figuring out the kid. The boy, blue eyes and spiked yellow hair aside (not that Ichigo had any room to talk), didn't look that weird: no heavy length of chain trailing from his front or anything. His fashion choice was bizarre—he was wrapped in a black robe, with a dangerously sharp trowel tucked under the orange sash, and had on a pair of woven straw sandals—but Ichigo knew there was a cosplay convention happening downtown sometime that week.

But he was acting like a ghost. He walked by a telephone pole nearly close enough to brush it with his shoulder without so much as a glance over. A woman and a dog headed past him without any form of acknowledgement from either party. The tall, scowling teenager's unsubtle stalking had yet to elicit any change in behavior.

Yet when a car drove by, the kid startled badly enough to reach for the trowel, resting his hand loosely around the orange-wrapped handle and watching the vehicle with wide eyes until after it turned down the next corner. Not a ghost's reaction, that. (Not most living people's either. But one mystery first.)

With anyone else, he might have simply gone up and asked, but in this case the thought had barely crossed his mind that he dismissed it. If he was a spirit, then it could be dangerous to approach—Ichigo wasn't soon going to forget the other child he hadn't been sure about. The sky was clear today, and the nearest river was several miles away, and he was... alone, but. No.

If he was living, then Ichigo needed to help him track down his parents and make sure they knew it wasn't acceptable to let their kid son wander unattended through an unfamiliar neighborhood. Either way, he needed to know, and for that to happen he needed to act first. He would compromise.

From half a block away, he called, "Hey! Blonde kid in the robe!"

Said kid's steps faltered. Slowly, he turned around, looking up at Ichigo with his brow scrunched up in bemusement. He glanced behind himself, as if checking to make sure Ichigo wasn't addressing some other yellow-haired boy in black robes, then back to Ichigo.

"Me?" he shouted in return.

"You, yeah! Are you alive?"

The kid stared.

Eventually, "No!"

"Oh," said Ichigo. The kid's voice was high-pitched, trapped at an age before girls' and boys' voices began to split. His body, as far as Ichigo could tell, was thankfully umarked, so probably an illness or an unlucky head injury. Suffocation, if he really wanted to follow such a line of thought. "You need anything?"

The kid was grinning. Ichigo recognized the look. Every ghost wore it when they realized that one of the living could see them, that they could finally talk to someone and expect an answer back after days of begging in vain for someone to please just acknowledge their existence. It was the main reason Ichigo didn't ignore ghosts, even after fifteen years of them intruding on his life at the worst times at the slightest word or gesture in their direction; he was willing to bear a little inconvenience and annoyance if it meant he could put that expression on someone's face.

The girl by the riverside hadn't smiled that way.

Ichigo relaxed just a little. That meant he didn't reflexively punch the kid's lights out when a round face with three thin lines drawn on either cheek suddenly took up Ichigo's entire field of vision.

"Holy—"

"You don't have weird eyes," the kid said curiously, completely ignoring Ichigo's panicked flailing. "D'you have a demon?"

Ichigo took a few hurried steps back to where he couldn't feel the kid's breath on the bridge of his nose. "What kind of question is that? And— how are you floating?"

Contrary to popular belief, ghosts did not float. They could jump rather high and stay in the air for longer than was physically possible, but that wasn't the same as hovering two feet off the ground as if it was solid earth rather than gas beneath his sandals.

"I'm standing," he enunciated, clearly amused at Ichigo's expense. He had a heavy but unplaceable accent. "So do ya?"

The scowl made its hasty return. "No."

"But you c'n see me. Only..." His tongue poked out of his mouth as he counted something on his fingers. "Gaara-kun, Fuu-neechan, Nii-neesan, Kakashi... Ringo-san. Er, you're not dying or 'nything, are you?"

"No," Ichigo said again. "Is that a list of the people who can see you?" If it was, then Ichigo's ability was a lot more common than he'd been led to believe. They'd all have to be around Karakura Town, too—spirits not tied down to one place all seemed to vanish within a week or so, and even though that was more than enough time to board a plane to France or someplace, they never liked to roam too far from their place of death.

"Well, Ringo-san could only see me right after I saved her from drowning and then she couldn't anymore," and then he added as an afterthought in the same breath, "I'm Naruto."

A pause as Ichigo reoriented: he'd been devoting more attention to trying to figure the kid out than listening to his actual words, so the non sequitur caught him off guard. "Ichigo."

"I'm from the other world. D'you know how I can get back?"

"To the afterlife?"

Naruto thought about it, scrunching his eyes nearly shut. "It's hard to explain—I don't really get it—but there's two worlds and they're opposites of each other. Kind of. Flipsides? I don't know. I'm trying ta get back, but I can't find a hollow that'll stop attacking me long enough to help."

"So," said Ichigo slowly, parsing out what he could of that nonsensical outburst. "You're not really dead?"

"I'm dead!" said Naruto, completely insouciant.

"I've never seen a soul without a chain."

"I'm a different kind of dead," he clarified, as if that explained anything at all. "Hey, do you know where I can find a hollow? This place is interesting an' all—an' weird—but if I don't get back soon Gaara-kun might... er. It won't be good if he thinks I left on my own without telling him."

Well, it wasn't like he didn't have time to spare in helping. Yuzu would understand if he got home late and leave a plate out for him to heat up. The kid sounded a little off his rocker—Ichigo'd seen similar before, when the shock of death hit someone so hard that they grasped onto any explanation they could in order to cope—but he wasn't about to abandon a kid to deal with his death on his own.

"I don't know where they are, but I'll search with you," Ichigo offered.

"Really?" His face lit up completely, a bright grin stretching across the whole of it. "Thanks, oniisan!"

"What's it look like?"

"Ya've never seen a hollow before?" he asked, as if Ichigo had just asked him what ramen was. "But— you can see ghosts, can't you? How come you don't—" He broke off, staring at Ichigo. "Oh."

"What?"

"If there's more people with reiryoku here then they probably wouldn't go after you," Naruto recited. "Nii-neesan has way more reiryoku and they still only try ta eat her sometimes."

"Eat her? Like—" He bit himself off and pretended to be watching a black cat lounging on the nearest house's windowsill as a gaggle of middle schoolers biked past. Once they'd made it out of hearing range he picked the question back up. "You mean like a zombie? Or a monster?"

"Like both! They used ta be people, and now they're monsters, so it's like zombies except they're dead-dead, not walking-dead, 'ttebayo. 'Ey've all got these big white masks, and there's a hole where their chain was and all they want to do is eat people to fill in the hole 'cept they can't but they're still hungry so they have to eat people even though it doesn't help. The big ones are only a little taller than me, but they're still dangerous because living people aren't expecting them and dead people don't have chatra so they aren't strong enough to break the hollows' masks on their own."

The hand gestures had been distracting enough that Ichigo'd only gotten about every fifth word. It was enough to get the gist of it. "And— you're looking for one," said Ichigo flatly.

Naruto shrugged. "Well, unless you can open gargantas what else 'm I supposed to do?"

Ichigo rolled his eyes. "Quit throwing out random words like you expect me to know what you're talking about."

A sheepish grin, followed by zero attempts to explain. "They're not super common, but in a city this big we should be okay. You coming, oniisan?"

"To look for hollows, right?" said Ichigo. "Yeah, sure."

Naruto hopped down to the sidewalk and started off down the street in the direction he'd originally been going. Ichigo hefted his backpack and stepped in beside him. He thought he'd have to slow down to let the kid keep up, but there turned out to be no need for it. Each of Naruto's strides took him farther than should have been possible; it looked nearly like he was skating across the pavement.

Ichigo was... less certain now that they wouldn't find anything. The description of the monsters was still far-fetched—while Ichigo didn't know for sure what happened to ghosts whose chains finished eroding, he'd always assumed that it meant they would just move on; turning into masked spiritual cannibalistic monsters had certainly never crossed his mind—but it was also more detailed than anything he'd heard from the other slightly delusional spirits.

The kid himself was odd, too. Putting the obvious aside, he also didn't act like someone who'd just died. He'd been downright cheerful about announcing the fact, and then he'd only been surprised that Ichigo could see him, not that there were people with the ability to perceive spirits in the first place. He'd even met at least five people before who could do it...

Wait.

Spirits couldn't affect the living world. Naruto claimed to have saved one of the people who'd been able to see him. It didn't take a genius to figure out something wasn't adding up.

Ichigo kept a surreptitious eye on the kid for any sign that he was interacting with anything physical, but he didn't get an opportunity to confirm. There wasn't enough wind that day to toss up leaves and the sidewalk was clean of litter to step on. While Naruto was undoubtedly walking strangely—even ignoring the distance he covered, there was the fact that his feet kept landing at arbitrary elevations without ever touching the pavement—that probably didn't count as the same thing.

"Naruto," Ichigo said.

The kid spun around in front of him and started skipping backwards to keep his gaze on Ichigo, paper-thin speckles of nearly-clear pink marking briefly the spots he stopped at. With every step his feet came down slightly higher, which quickly brought him up to eye level. It was more than a little bizarre to watch.

"What kind of dead are you?" Ichigo wouldn't usually ask something that seemingly insensitive, but Naruto had brought up the tidbit earlier so offhandedly and with so little hesitation that Ichigo didn't think he would mind the question now.

"I'm not that much different from everyone else," Naruto deflected. "I just stayed behind to help other people move on. 'S all." He whirled back around to face forward, locking his fingers behind his head and leaning back into them. "Sometimes people bring too much weight with them when they go down. So. I finish what they couldn't. You know what I'm talking about, right, Ichigo-oniisan?"

Ichigo was silent for a while before he answered. "Yeah. I do." He did the same thing, after all. "You've been here for a long time, haven't you?"

"Yup!" He glanced back at Ichigo, just enough for the teen to catch the corner of a grin and one near-closed eye. "More 'an long enough ta get over death-shock, even."

Ichigo stopped. Naruto wasted no time in following suit and pivoting again to face him, and this time that cheerful smile had an edge to it. "You've got permission ta believe me now, 'ttebayo."

What a brat. Karin at her worst didn't even come close to this kid.

Still, priorities: if he was sane, then all that about the zombie monsters called hollows might actually be true.

"So we're looking for a hollow," Ichigo said slowly.

Nod.

"What are you going do when we find a hollow?"

"Make it take me home," said Naruto. "It was a hollow that brought me away, so another one should be able ta get me back there."

"Back to the afterlife."

Naruto frowned. "No, back to my world, not— Right, so, there's your world—that's this—" he made a broad gesture around them, "—and there's my world, which— isn't this. And my afterlife's not your afterlife."

"You're from a different dimension," Ichigo stated, not quite believing the words coming out of his own mouth.

He seemed to be right, though, because the kid brightened again. "Yeah!"

"And hollows can... travel between dimensions." Masked spiritual cannibalistic dimension-hopping monsters. Why not?

"They can open gargantas to and from Hueco Mundo. Hueco Mundo's the hollows' world, 'ttebayo. It connects our worlds together, like a bridge, except it's a bridge with hollows in it—"

"Alright, I've got it," Ichigo cut in before Naruto could extend that metaphor and muddle up his explanation even further. "Where do you fit in?"

Naruto cocked his head, blinking. Sounding genuinely bewildered, he answered, "I'm me, 'ttebayo."

Ichigo looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. He wanted badly to know, but more than that, he didn't feel like pressing a little kid for the circumstances of his death when he obviously didn't wish to talk about it.

"I guess it's my turn!" said Naruto. He pointed at the telephone lines above them. "What're those for? They look like they're for walking on, but I've only seen crows using 'em."

"For walking on? Only if someone wants to get shocked to death."

"Oh, they're for defense." Naruto squinted up at them, frowning in concentration.

"Uh." Ichigo gave him an odd look. "They're telephone lines. Wait— your… dimension doesn't have telephones?"

"Nu-uh."

"They let people talk to each other long-distance," Ichigo explained shortly.

"Real-time?" At Ichigo's nod, Naruto pressed on, "You can talk to someone from across a city that way?"

"Across the world, actually. It's just that long-distance calls are more expensive."

For a few seconds Naruto just gaped, wide-eyed. "But—! Anyone can—?" he spluttered. "How long d'your wars last, 'ttebayo?"

Ichigo said blankly, "What?"

"If you c'n react to attacks and stuff immediately then nothing'll ever end, it'll just get bigger faster and, and everyone else'll know just 's fast as you do, 'ttebayo, and 'ey'll always know where most of your ninja are and 'ey'll always have to kill everyone 'cause any one survivor c'n pass on the message—"

"What kind of place are you from?" Ichigo asked, more than a little perturbed by how quickly Naruto's thoughts had leaped to outright war. It might explain the dangerously sharp trowel he was carrying, but— the kid was six. Five. Somewhere thereabouts, at any rate.

Had been six.

No. There weren't any more signs of a violent death now than there had been a few seconds ago. But there were plenty of ways to commit murder without leaving any outward mark.

Naruto stared at him, the pencil-thin lines on his cheeks stark against his ashen skin. "You don't use 'em for fighting?" As if it was an alien concept.

No phones, and Naruto's weapon was a simple bladed one improvised out of a trowel. Still not necessarily technologically behind, if the more advanced tools were restricted to their militaries, or, with their mindset, if they destroyed innovations because all they could think about was how much easier they would make it for the other sides to take lives.

Baseless speculation later. Reassure the kid first. He shelved the guesswork for when he had more information and knew what a different dimension actually meant. "We do, but—" Ichigo hesitated, wondering just how to explain. He settled with, "Wars don't last any longer now than they did before we had phones. Normal people use them to talk with friends and family, or for business."

"...You're weird," said Naruto, but color was returning to his face.

Ichigo bit down on the obvious retort with a massive effort.

"So what're those things? The really fast boxes with wheels?"

Naruto didn't take to cars the way he had to phones, more fascinated than horrified by their concept. Apparently in the other dimension, the only neutrally aligned country on Naruto's continent held a monopoly over the distribution of iron and most other useful metals, so any attempt to mass produce steel vehicles that only worked on flat surfaces, no matter how fast they were or how much they could carry, would be a laughable waste of precious material. Gasoline was an incendiary that had a dozen more versatile and accessible alternatives, and inflatable wheels and rubber just confused him.

It turned out Naruto had seen cell phones at some point too, and the explanation for those inevitably linked to a mention of satellites, and space, and from there somehow to Japan's international relations onward to the Olympics and football and public education. Then to Karakura's rampant gangs and where Ichigo stood with them (which came down to wherever Ichigo was standing, they weren't), and from there to Ichigo's trigonometry grade, at which point he drew the line and asked for information from Naruto's side so it could at least resemble a fair trade.

Naruto was willing to share, happily giving him a basic rundown of the Elemental Countries and the ninja system that governed them, but the moment Ichigo asked for specifics the kid started playing dumb. "Specifics" included things like if they literally ran up walls and raised dragons out of water, was he waxing poetic when he said the Fourth Hokage had sold his soul to the Shinigami to slay a kaijuu-esque nine-tailed fox (which was Ichigo's original inclination, until Naruto mentioned that it had only happened ten years ago), and what was this chatra or chakra thing he kept mentioning.

He seemed genuinely surprised by that last question, though. "Ya don't know what chakra is?"

"I'm asking, aren't I?"

"You probably just have a different name for it, 'ttebayo," said Naruto. "It's life force."

"Ki," Ichigo realized.

Naruto cocked his head. "Probably!"

But Naruto spoke about chakra like it was as important and prevalent as blood, while ki, even before it became nearly a niche belief, hadn't ever been something that could kill a person who didn't have enough of it. Certainly nobody had ever fainted and gotten carted to his dad's clinic for ki exhaustion.

Naruto suddenly stumbled. Ichigo reached out to him, but he caught himself on his own and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at Ichigo with wide eyes.

"You alright?" Ichigo asked uncertainly.

"I—" A hissing intake of breath. "'m fine. I'm fine. Ya don't feel different, oniisan?"

"Why would I?"

"Your reiryoku's— Look, can ya see this?" He flicked a finger towards the stop sign on the corner, sending out a scattering of crimson sparks that dissolved nearly immediately. They were the same color as the platforms he made to walk on—which was strange, because Ichigo remembered thinking thirty minutes ago that the kid was levitating.

He stared at the space where the sparks had vanished. "I couldn't before."

"Nah," Naruto agreed. "People's reiryoku grow if I hang around 'em for too long, but it usually takes a few weeks at least, and I've known Haku for two years and he still can't hear me. It doesn't happen in an hour, 'ttebayo."

"You couldn't have mentioned this earlier?"

"Didn't think it'd come up. But," a predatory gleam entered his eye, "this is a good thing! I can't be the only one that felt 'at spike, which means we're gonna get company pretty— ah, there we go."

With no warning, a scream that didn't belong under sunlight tore through the sky.

Ichigo gritted his teeth and covered his ears, but the multilayered shriek bored straight into his ears regardless and pressed down on his shoulders as a physical weight. It seemed to coming from every direction at once, filling the space between every molecule of air for miles around.

Finally it died away, just in time for a monster to land on the other side of the intersection, the sound of its impact overshadowed by the fading echoes of the scream.

There really wasn't any other word for it but monster. Its back legs and webbed feet were minuscule compared to its hulking body, while the fists it braced against the ground were each as tall as Naruto. Its skin was pure black, including the inside of the perfect circular hole that ran through its chest. A horned bone mask that barely resembled a crying face covered every part of its head but its nostrils and glaring yellow eyes.

The first thought that flitted through Ichigo's head at the sight was that he felt bad for its spine.

"Wow, you're really big!" said Naruto, looking the twelve-foot hollow over. He didn't sound too worried.

The hollow leaned its face closer to their level. Ichigo startled when recognizable words echoed out from behind the mask. "I came expecting to find a very tasty living soul, but a death god also? Oh, what a—"

"Shinigami?" Naruto repeated shrilly. "Whadda ya mean, Shinigami? I am not!"

"Denying it won't save you, little—"

"I'm not the Shinigami!" He turned his back on the hollow to demand of Ichigo, "Do I look like some hairy old demon to you? I'm wearing black!"

"What are you going—"

Naruto rounded on the hollow again. "I'm Naruto, 'ttebayo, and don't you forget it!"

"I don't care about dead—"

Naruto pounded a fist into his palm, demeanor shifting without transition into eagerness. "Oh right, I need ta ask ya something first. Can ya make a garganta ta—"

"Interrupt me again," the hollow snarled, slaver dripping from behind its mask to steam against the pavement, "and I will ensure that you never find peace in your—"

"Look, just let me finish first, okay?" said Naruto with such well-feigned impatience that Ichigo actually believed it for half a second. He might have been more prepared to admire the artistry if the kid wasn't busy confirming all his earlier doubts about his sanity. "I get it if you're too useless to make one, but I need a garganta to the other living world and I don't really feel like hunting down another hollow today."

With a howl, the monster lunged.

In a single practiced motion, Naruto slipped a finger through the ring on the end of his trowel, drew it and spun it a few times, and closed his hand around the orange wrappings in a loose grip. Then he blurred forwards to ram the weapon's ring against the forehead of the hollow's mask, stopping it dead in place before it had even moved a foot.

There was no time to react before a red pressure descended that tore all the air from Ichigo's lungs. He staggered, only keeping himself from falling to his knees by catching himself against the stop sign. What even...

The hollow let out a low moan and sank trembling to the ground, its arms jerking in spastic twitches as it tried and failed to push itself upright again.

"I inn't asking for a lot here, hollow-san," Naruto said clearly without any inflection, but the pressure thickened his voice into something hard and rough. He stood casually above them as if he didn't even feel the weight. Ichigo could barely draw breath. "I wouldn't mind an answer sometime soon."

The hollow gurgled out a curse. "I'll—"

"No you won't," Naruto stated. "You're nearly unconsciousness just from my reiatsu. I haven't even called Chikai yet. If you walk away from here with your mask whole, it'll be because I let ya, 'ttebayo." A pause. Ichigo took the moment to wonder at what the hell he was listening to. "Which I won't. But it's still your choice how much dignity you're gonna go out with. Help me, and I'll let ya fight back. Don't, and you can die groveling on the ground instead."

"No," said the hollow. "No, no, no, no, no—"

Naruto hopped down to stand in easy reach of its clawed fists. He said nothing, only spun the weapon easily around between his small fingers.

Slowly the frantic muttering faded away, until the only sound left was an oblivious crow squawking from the next street over. And then the hollow said, "Only a hollow from that world can go there, or one that's eaten a hollow from that world."

Naruto stilled. "That's not going ta be easy," he muttered, then sighed. "Thank you, hollow-san."

Immediately the pressure lifted and the hazy scarlet tint to the air faded.

Ichigo's nerveless fingers lost their grip on the metal pole. He fell gracelessly to his knees and retched. The hollow's scream sounded muffled through the ringing in his ears, and maybe it was just him, but he remembered the first one going on for a lot longer.

He closed his eyes until he felt less like the capillaries in them were a hairsbreadth from bursting. When he finally looked back up, it was to see only Naruto crouched a short distance away. There was no trace of the hollow.

No need to ask where it had gone.

Ichigo pulled himself back to his feet. Naruto bounced a little on his toes and tilted his head to the side, looking up at the teenager.

"What was that," said Ichigo.

The answer came without the slightest hesitation. "Nothing important! Thanks for helping me, Ichigo-oniisan, and sorry ya were here for that," Naruto said in a rush, as upbeat as if he wasn't admitting candidly to having used Ichigo for monster bait. "Can ya get home on your own?"

The sound that made its way out of Ichigo's throat wasn't quite a growl. "You don't get to just—"

Naruto smiled. "I'm dead, oniisan. I can do whatever I want and it doesn't matter."

To prove his point, he raised one hand in a jaunty wave, and the next second all that remained of him was a splash of rapidly dissipating red dust.