God, I can't believe I was up till 1 a.m. finishing this… hope you enjoy it.

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Chapter Three: Walk Through the Door

What the hell! He was falling to the ground with a velocity in the realm of the supersonic, from at least nine hundred feet up! He was falling so fast he couldn't make out the features of the ground he would be one with in the next eight seconds. At this speed, he would be dead before he could even register that he'd hit the ground. What had that sunlight-deprived Palido done? All he'd asked was to get his memories back, but for some reason he'd decided to screw him over and throw him to his death.

He wasn't slowing down, and he could sense that the end was near. He screamed a scream he never heard, the rushing wind stealing it from his lips before they'd even opened and instead filling his ears with its own whistling scream, drowning out all other sound. He put his arms up before his face in a futile, laughable attempt to save himself from a pitiful death, spattered on the ground like a pathetic gob of mayonnaise as it rushed up to meet his-

He came to an abrupt stop mere inches from the ground. He was panting hard, practically hyperventilating, his heart racing, pumping blood and a huge dose adrenaline through his system. He flopped the last couple of inches to the ground, hitting with a soft thud. He tried to get to his feet, but he was shaking so badly he could barely sit up. What was the big idea? he asked himself. Why had Palido done that? Was scaring him shitless part of the "task of regaining his memories?" He had said that it would be painful.

What the hell. He took a couple of very deep breaths for a while until the shaking had abated enough that he could stand on his feet. He was in what looked like the backstreets of a quaint little town. A light breeze blew litter across the deserted street and also tickled him in the ear. He found it ironic that a few seconds ago the wind had nearly torn his ears off. He let loose a dry laugh as he took his time to drink in his surroundings, trying to jog a memory, trying to recall if this had been a favorite haunt of his, if he'd used this route regularly… if he'd ever gotten beat up here, anything . All he got was fuzzy static. He sighed. He was alone, in what appeared to be a cliché ghost town, and would have been alone and in the dark if it not for the streetlights that shed scattered beams of light on his environs. A fire hydrant here, a stop sign there, a picket fence. There was nothing he could see that told him where to go next. At that point in time he would have given a foot and an eye for a sign that proclaimed "MEMORIES" in flashing neon lights. He cursed in frustration and lashed out, kicking a nearby Coke can across the street and into a signboard that said "MEMORI-"

Hey! Right there on that signboard, it said "MEMORIES"! In flashing neon, no less! What the hell was going on?

All of a sudden he felt very uneasy. An ominous sensation he was familiar with came over him, like so many other times that he had sensed that he was being watched. He'd come to trust these strange intuitions. He turned around cautiously, knowing he would turn to face someone –or something— he had better be prepared for.

And there he was. The source of his uneasiness. Where previously there'd been no one, there stood a figure shrouded in the dark of a corner the streetlights could not illuminate.

"Oh Ichigo. It is so easy to toy with your mind, even in here, within yourself," he said as he stepped out of the dark into the light, a tall, longhaired man in translucent wraparound shades and a long, tattered black garb.

He instantly recognized him.

"I remember you! You're that guy I saw in my memories when I first woke up. You're— "

A burst of images!

Standing alone on a battleground, wielding a zanpakutou, surrounded by this man, several copies of him…

Falling down the side of a tall building beside him…

On the ground, bleeding, looking up at him …

The man shouting at him to stand up and fight…

Roaring as he clashed swords with Ichigo…

He was flooded with emotions and images, as though the sight of this man had opened a floodgate in the dam that blocked his memories. This man whose name was-

"—Zangetsu." He remembered him.

"Ah. So you at least remember me. This may yet not be as difficult as I imagined." He locked Ichigo in a gaze that gave him the weird sensation of being in a vise, a huge and impossibly powerful clamp that would squeeze everything out into the open and leave nothing untouched. He felt like his soul was being bared out in the open.

The man in black's gaze intensified. "Oh? But that is all you are, a soul that was forcibly wrenched out of its habitation and sealed away in what was intended to be a prison, but may yet be the source of salvation."

Ichigo couldn't believe it. He was rapidly coming to believe that it would be expedient to trade his mind for the safety of an asylum cubicle, locked away from Shinigamis, Hollows, preternatural Palidos and eldritch Zangetsus whom he did not know or understand. First, Palido had brought him here, by some infernal means, apparently to meet with this weird man from a past he was beginning to dread, who could seemingly read his mind. Now he was being told he was merely a soul? It was preposterous. He pinched himself hard, half expecting his fingers to phase through his arm, as impossible as that was. He winced at the pang, yet was thankful for it. Good old bodily pain receptors, he thought.

Zangetsu moved closer, never once taking his eyes off Ichigo, those eyes that were as unblinking as a cadaver's, as piercing as a scream in the dark. His face was barely inches from Ichigo's when he stopped. Holding a gaze he had no power to break, Ichigo no longer felt his soul was being bared. He felt his soul was being dissected and scrutinized under floodlights. He felt he was being dissected.

"Ichigo, it pains me to see you like this, so lost and confused," he said softly, his eyes seeming to waver slightly. "I will help you regain everything, but to do that, I'll have to take you to a place you may not want to go to. Are you sure you want to go there?" he asked.

"What is with you people? I'll tell you what I told Palido, ye-"

He never finished his sentence. All of a sudden, his surroundings broke up into cubes that floated up and away, revealing a layer of white beneath them which soon enough melted into another scene, set in the same town (he assumed) but in a different quarter.

What he saw was bedlam beyond anything he had ever imagined possible.

The night, which a second ago had been as still as a sleeping babe, was now filled with piercing screams the eternally damned would have envied. Everywhere, all he saw was people running, screaming their heads off, mothers holding their babies tight as they ran, motorists careening down the streets with no regard whatsoever for pedestrian life, homes, storefronts, street vendors' stalls, unmanned vehicles, anything that was stationary either destroyed, mangled or on fire.

And in numbers even greater than the doomed community's screaming denizens, Hollows wreaked the insane havoc. It was as though some malevolent creator deity with a horribly twisted imagination had loosed the very worst of his formations upon the doomed town as punishment for some unspeakable offence. Those terribly unfortunate ones who were too slow or just plain unlucky were snapped up like minnows, eaten whole before they even had the chance to scream. To his left, Ichigo caught sight of a pterodactyl-like Hollow tearing its victim limb from limb, cawing in ecstasy at the sight of blood and the sound of crunching bone.

Ichigo stood there, shocked beyond his capacity for the morbid. He tried unsuccessfully to suppress the urge to hurl and doubled over, retching painfully, though his stomach had no contents to heave. Zangetsu stood there, his eyes filled with sadness beyond expression, taking in the horrors before him. He remembered a time when he had sworn to himself that he would never let Ichigo feel any pain whatsoever. He cast his eyes down sadly, looking at Ichigo, whose retching had ceased, yet was still wracked with spasms as he sobbed, unable to take the sight before him. He lifted his eyes to gaze at the once-beautiful patch of sky above Karakura town which now swarmed with the most terrifying flying monsters imaginable. He had never failed to keep a promise, even if it was only to himself. Never. And he didn't plan on letting the Laughing Man ruin his record.

"I'm sorry Ichigo, but you had to see this first if you were to understand." He laid a hand gently on Ichigo's shoulder. "Do you wish to continue? To find out what led to this?"

Ichigo stood to his feet, his face tear-streaked, his voice momentarily lost. He stood at Zangetsu's side, no longer the lost drifter he had been, for even though a significant chunk of his memory was still missing, the images before him had at least sparked enough recollection that he was well on his way to fully regaining his total recall. He couldn't stop now. With determination born of newfound purpose, Ichigo turned to his guide and said, "I'm good. Let's keep going."

The faintest hint of a smile pulled at Zangetsu's lips as he nodded his approval. Once more, their surroundings broke up into cubes that immediately floated off, to be replaced by a new scene. They were in the same town, but apparently at a different point in time, presumably before the bedlam. They stood in front of a small building with a sign that said "Urahara Shop" (his heart knocked in elation as he realized that he remembered the place!). A few feet ahead he could see his past self gesticulating angrily as he spoke to someone, a tallish man in sandals and a hat (a nickname flitted through his mind, but it was gone before he could grasp it) whom he assumed to be the proprietor. They were just close enough to hear what he was saying.

"What the hell do you mean you can't take it away?! You're the great and mighty Sandal-hat guy (he remembered the nickname now)! How can this be a problem for you?"

"In the first place, Kurosaki-kun, you are the first case I have ever observed of a Shinigami being capable of achieving Resureccion. I don't know about the other Vizards, but I think it would be a first even for them," Urahara said calmly, unfazed by Ichigo's apparent anger. "I really don't understand why you would even want to be rid of you Resureccion. It could prove invaluable in the real, final battle against Aizen and the Arrancar," he said.

"I… can do without it. You should have seen me when I was fighting Ulquiorra! I went totally apeshit and would have killed Ishida if Orihime hadn't been there! In that form, my Hollow is in complete control, and I can't tell friend from foe. All I know is the bloodlust… and I don't need that! Worse comes to worst I'll find some other way of beating Aizen. I can't risk taking the whole of Gotei 13 down with him," Ichigo said, obviously very frustrated.

Urahara exhaled slowly and said, "Kurosaki-kun, I need you to calm down, go home and think things through. Don't let your fears get in the way of the greater good. I'm afraid I cannot be of help to you. Good day." He turned his back to Ichigo and walked into the store, leaving him out in the front yard.

At Zangetsu's side, Ichigo had almost had an epiphany. He was on the brink of regaining all his memories, and he knew that their next destination would be the revelation that broke open the floodgates. He almost shivered in anticipation, his tears forgotten and long since dried on his face.

The scene broke up into the now-familiar cubes, then dissolved into a new one.

They were in a cemetery. The Past Ichigo stood at one of the gravestones, his mind obviously a million miles away. He seemed to still be absorbed with thoughts of getting rid of his Resureccion. Suddenly, the air was filled with an almost musical sound, like a distorted chime floating through the air. At Zangetsu's side, Ichigo felt a chill run through him at the sound. Where was that from? he wondered.

A millisecond later, a man dressed all in white appeared from nowhere, his hands tucked in his pockets, a lopsided smile on his face. Ichigo didn't know how to place it, but there was something oddly malevolent about his appearance. Whether it was the way his dark hair was slicked back away from his elongated, moon-shaped face or his thin-slit eyes with their black irises, those twinkleless eyes that added to the unsettling effect about him, he didn't know. He simply could not place it. His lithe physique gave the impression that he was quite adept at employing the long black zanpakutou that hung at his side.

He walked towards Past Ichigo, his smile broadening very slightly into the beginnings of a controlled grin.

Present Ichigo whispered to Zangetsu, as though afraid that speaking aloud would break the spell this man's presence seemed to have cast. "Who is he?" he asked.

Zangetsu didn't even turn to face him as he said simply, "The Laughing Man."

Ichigo's heart thumped in his ribcage as he looked at his past self, seemingly unaware of the Laughing man's presence. He wanted to shout out a warning, as useless as he knew that would be, when his past self turned to face him and said-

"It's about time you showed up. I've been waiting for hours."

Ichigo just about went into cardiac arrest. What was he doing?!

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that I had a bit of… business to attend to." He laughed a smile, musical laugh.

"So, Kurosaki-san, what can I do for you?" he asked, his smile never once leaving his face as he scrutinized Ichigo with those hawkish eyes of his.

Ichigo stepped away from the gravestone, his gaze cast downward. Apparently this was an issue he's down enough brooding to hatch an egg over, so his answer was almost immediate:

"I want you to take away my Hollow powers," he said, lifting his gaze to catch the Laughing Man's eyes.

The smile no longer merely hinted at fullness. It escalated into a full on manic grin, dripping with malice only a mole would have difficulty seeing.

"Why certainly. A most daunting task, I must admit, though I believe I am well up to the task.

"However, I have one question. Who told you I can perform this kind of operation?"

"Word gets round. Let's get to it," he said as he walked toward the Laughing Man.

His obscene grin seemed to widen, if that was possible. He unsheathed his zanpakutou slowly, protracting the metallic ring of metal-on-metal for as long as possible, as though it was all a game he was enjoying immensely. He held the sword up at eye level, holding it dead between Ichigo's eyes.

"I'll grant your wish, sonny-boy. I'll take your hollow powers, and everything else," he said as he let go of the blade. It hung in the space between them like a death sentence. Ichigo froze at these last words, as though he was beginning to realize something, but it was already too late.

"You should never trust an Apenado, boy," he said as his blade sped through and out the back of Ichigo's skull, forever dooming him to his fate as a prisoner of the Laughing Man.

True to his name he broke into a horrendously manic fit of laughter the Ichigo at Zangetsu's side had never imagined possible. He watched in open-mouthed shock as his past self flopped lifelessly to the ground, surely a cadaver in every respect.

Slowly he turned to Zangetsu, shock written in every detail of his face, the crazed Apenado's laughter ringing in his ears.

"What… what has he done? What did I just let him do?" he asked, horrified at the sight of his body slumped on the ground as it was, unmoving.

For the first time since they had arrived there Zangetsu turned to face him and said simply, "He took everything, Ichigo. Everything."

==End Chapter Three