Hello and welcome back, readers! Last chapter, Ichigo was on her way to the aliens' dimension. Here is chapter 3!


Reviews:

DrDark7: Just you wait... :P


Ichigo watched Kisshu send a message to Pai's and Taruto's pagers to let them know that he had found her. They were the only things the aliens had found so far that could send messages across dimensions. At least, that's what Kisshu had told her.

He finished and looked up. Ichigo looked away. "What now?" she asked.

She was interrupted by her stomach growling. She turned red and looked down.

"What have you eaten today?" Kisshu asked.

"Some bread," Ichigo responded. "I'm fine, it's-"

"No. That won't do you any good. Human food doesn't provide any sustenance for us. Come with me." Kisshu began to walk off, and Ichigo follow him, glad for something to do. She didn't want to just wait there for Pai and Taruto to arrive. She was still trying to convince herself not to kill them when they got there.

They arrived at the kitchen. "Instant noodles?" offered Kisshu.

"Noodles are alien food?" Ichigo asked.

"Noodles are universal." Kisshu responded with a smile.

He had just begun to boil the water when Ichigo felt, rather than saw, a ripple pass through the air, a dissonance in the aura of the room. Seconds later, Pai and Taruto appeared out of thin air. A wave of pure, unadulterated fury swept over her.


Kisshu looked up to wave at Taruto and Pai when a pink blur sped across the room.

"No! Ichigo!" He called, too late.

Ichigo collided with Pai at speeds that Kisshu, even with his alien sight, could only barely see. They both went flying, until Pai inevitably crashed into the wall on the far side of the room. He fell down onto the floor, his head sagging like a rag-doll's. A huge dent now remained in the wall.

Ichigo looked ready to strike again, until she saw that Pai wasn't moving. Her hands started shaking. Clearly, she hadn't yet realised how much new power she had as an alien. She fled the room. He knew he should follow her, she would get lost. Their dimension was confusing, and with the state of mind she was in there would be no doubt that she would get lost.

He went to check on Pai first. He should let Ichigo calm down before she saw him anyway. Kisshu doubted that there was any lasting damage, aliens were too strong to be killed by one blow. If she had wanted to kill him, however, if she hadn't been acting on blind rage… Had they made Ichigo too powerful?

"Witch!" Taruto called out to where Ichigo had disappeared, before hurrying to Pai. Kisshu checked his pulse - still breathing. Pai was only injured.

"He'll be fine." Confirmed Kisshu. He went to the boiling water and added the noodles while Taruto checked for blood on the back of Pai's head. Hopefully, if he brought food then Ichigo wouldn't rip his head off.

"Why the hell did she do that?" Taruto burst out.

"I don't know. Maybe because Pai stripped her of Mew Ichigo, forced her to change species and isolated her from her friends and family. That would probably do it." Kisshu didn't mean to be sarcastic with Taruto, but he couldn't help himself. He wasn't too happy with the situation either.

"But she was totally fine with you before we got here!" Taruto responded immediately, a confused look on his face. Kisshu thought back to his lie with a grimace.

"I… might have told her that I had nothing to do with it and that it was all your idea." Kisshu said after a pause.

"Kisshu!" Taruto screeched.

"Well what was I supposed to do, huh?" Kisshu yelled. "She has to trust one of us, or we'll never get her to-"

"Could you two keep it down?" Pai muttered, his eyes twitching.

"Pai!" Taruto sped to his side to help him up, immediately forgetting what Kisshu and he were talking about. Kisshu thanked The Ancients for the small miracles. He left Pai to Taruto while he went to find Ichigo.


Ichigo didn't know how she'd managed to find her room. She'd just felt a longing - it was like a string attached to her chest. It knew where she needed to go and led her there.

A noise made her look up. "Noodles?" Kisshu held out a bowl, the ghost of a hopeful half-smile on his face.

She didn't mention being able to find her room to Kisshu because she sensed that magically knowing something wasn't a common alien superpower. She just nodded and took the bowl from him.

"How did you find your room?" Kisshu asked, his eyebrows raising.

Ichigo fluttered. "I… Uh… This is my room?" She decided to play it dumb, even though she knew, she knew that this room was intended for her. She felt a smile come to her mouth at the thought of Kisshu setting a room for her in this dimension. It made the foreign place feel a little more… a little more like home.

And that's what it was now, she supposed. Home. She had nothing in the humans' realm anymore. Humans… how quickly she had come to the realization that she no longer belonged under the classification "human".

"Yeah…" Kisshu responded after a pause. Heat flared in her cheeks, it didn't look like he was buying her act. After a minute he said, "So… you wanna talk?"

About what? Ichigo almost said, then caught herself. Oh right, Pai. A flush of shame crawled over her at having forgotten so easily, then a flush of anger. Why should she feel sorry for what she had done to Pai? He deserved to suffer, for what he had done to her. Ichigo felt her temper heating up, and she needed to go out there - she need to hurt - to kill Pai. She felt herself getting up, walking towards the door. The edges of her vision blurred.

"Ichigo! What are you doing?" A voice distracted her from her goal. Kisshu's blurry face came into her vision.

"What am I doing…" she repeated slowly. What had she been doing? Kisshu's hand touched her arm, then quickly leaped away. He swore.

"Your skin is burning hot!" He said, shaking his hand.

"I- I'm sorry." stammered Ichigo. Was this an alien thing? This… rage? It was unlikely, at least from the look on Kisshu's face.

"I'm fine," Kisshu said, distractedly. "Get dressed, then come with me. We need to find out what you can do."


Ichigo searched her closet, finding clothes similar to Kisshu's - but in pink. There was a top that bared her midriff and a short skirt - she supposed that Kisshu had meant her to wear these. She imagined him, picking out clothes that were easier on her sensitive alien skin and smiled at the thought. Pink was as good a color-scheme as any.

She was surprised that the clothes fit her perfectly and were far more comfortable than her regular clothes.

It can't be Kisshu who chose these clothes, he told me that he didn't know about this. Ichigo thought. It must have been Pai. Ichigo wrinkled her nose at the thought, the clothes suddenly seeming less wonderful. It didn't matter, anyway. Ichigo hated all aliens - no matter if Kisshu had been kind to her. She'd only gone to them because she had no other options.

Right?


"Find it, search your mind." Kisshu was trying to teach Ichigo to summon her weapon. Every alien had a weapon that they could summon, assigned at birth. He would have gotten Pai to do this, he was always better at it - Pai had taught Kisshu to summon his dragon swords and Taruto to summon his click-clack toy - but then there was that issue with Ichigo going into a blind rage every time she thought about him.

That was as terrifying as it was interesting, Kisshu had never see anyone get angry as quickly as Ichigo had.

But that was a problem for another time. For now, a faint, concentrated look was on Ichigo's face. It disappeared, and her arms lifted with no effort from her. Her head fell back, and a mist appeared between her hands, growing, molding itself.

Until it formed an elegantly carved rose bow and a quiver filled with arrows covered in sparkling designs. The little 'oh' shape her mouth formed when she saw these pieces of art appear out of nowhere was serene. Her weapon matched her perfectly.

Only one thing was surprising - Kisshu checked the time. Yes, only 10 minutes had passed. The shortest time he'd ever seen taken to summon an alien's first weapon previously was two hours… amazing.

"Are you sure you've never summoned your weapon before?" he asked her, only half-joking. She didn't respond, but instead took an arrow and drew her bow, pointing at the air. The movement was flawless, as if she had done it a thousand times before. Kisshu beckoned her and led her to their training room. Over there, there were multiple targets for practice. Pai had insisted that the aliens learn archery, as well as fencing, judo and zorbing. 'You never know what might happen' he'd said.

Thinking about Pai made Kisshu wonder how he was doing, and how he was going to react to this new information about Ichigo's anger. Probably a bunch of tests. He toyed with the notion of just not telling Pai, but decided against it. They needed to be totally open with each other, the risks were too great. The cost if this went wrong…

Ichigo raised her bow and pointed the artfully designed tip of the arrow at the target. She let out a breath and released it at the same time as her arrow. It flew straight and true into the center of the target, of course. It would have been impossible for her to miss. This was the weapon her soul had chosen, the one that called to her spirit. It would have been weirder for her not to have been instantly good at it.

Ichigo turned to him with smiles in her eyes and Kisshu surprised himself by wrapping her up in a hug. She tensed, then relaxed and leaned into him, closing her eyes.

"Well done," he whispered against her bubble-gum pink hair and wished, more than anything, that he could stay in this moment forever.


Thank you for reading!

P.S. According to my spellchecker "zorbing" is not a word in America. They use the word "globe-riding" (I think). Americans, leave me a review so I can know if this is right!