Ichigo woke up with a groan and rubbed his eyes. Where was he? He looked around him. He was in a bed, there was a guitar in the corner over here and a desk in the corner over there...and there was the closet...He was in his room again! "Wait, I don't remember coming home last night," he thought out loud. "What hap...Tatsuki! Tatsuki's in danger!" He jumped up and tried to run to the door, but something made him freeze.
"Did ya really ferget what happened last night?" said a voice in Ichigo's head.
"Oh, Hakai! It's you."
"Don't 'Oh, Hakai' me! If you constantly come home late, getting yourself beat up along the way, of course you'll ferget where you were. Yer body don't want you to remember."
"I didn't forget," Ichigo pouted. "I just didn't remember."
"Ya sound like an old man. I can't believe yer the King. You know what, I won't believe yer King. I'll be King!" Ihakai tried to summon all his hollow energy, but the mask had barely appeared on his head before it disippated. "What the?" Ihakai tried with all his might to materialize the mask yet again, but it remained on his face for a mere second before it disappeared.
"Hahaha," Ichigo laughed. "It seems that you're just as constrained as I am in a human body."
"In a..." Ihakai paused a second to let it sink in, then glanced down at his "...human...body? Go, what is this?! I thought you were a Shinigami!"
"Huh. Guess again, Captain Brains. I was a human at first, and I'm a human now. That's what Old Man Zangetsu meant when he said my body was temporarily taken away."
Ihakai gave Ichigo a mental glare. "You meantersay...I'm a filthy, stinkin' human?!"
"Yes, Hakai. We are a 'filthy, stinkin' human.'"
Ichi paused for a moment, both halves joined in the suden realization that the entire second half of their conversation had been out loud.
Ichigo started to say something, but trailed off. "It's a..."
Ihakai caught his meaning and finished it, "...sure good thing nobody was 'round to hear ya scream at me, Go."
The two (or is it one?) of them were silent for about a minute, before a sound came out of Ichigo's desk drawer. Ichi crossed over to the desk quietly, carefully slid the drawer open, and...
Out popped a Kon. "Ichigo! Where have you been? What were you doing for the past week? And why in the world are you talking to yourself?" Kon jumped up and down, demanding answers. Ichigo caught Kon and held him by the neck.
"Go, what is that thing? How does it know your name?" Ihakai paused for a second, thinking. "Oh. Is it a..."
"Mod soul." Ichigo confirmed in his head this time, knocking out Kon's soul with his Seal of Approval. "I was thinking that since Sandal-Hat is the one who got us into this mess..."
"...he can be the one to get us out. Ya know, maybe ya actually do deserve to be my partner if yer that smart."
Ichigo ran down the stairs. "Just get out of my head, will you?" Ichigo, who was the more eager of the two to get his own body, was the one who took control. He took off out the door and down the street to the Urahara Shoten.
Urahara Kisuke waved cheerfully to a slightly disgruntled Abarai Renji as the latter slid down the ladder to Urahara's basement. "Have fun sparring all day!" he called, closing the hatch down to the basement for the morning.
"SANDAL-HAT!!!" a voice screamed from somewhere outside.
"Oh, Kurosaki-san," Urahara called cheerfully. "Come in. What can I do for you?"
"SPLIT US UP!" Ichi's calm, yet loud and forceful voice blasted Urahara's sense of hearing. Urahara looked up to see a very angry-looking Ichi with a thick, controlled aura of Shinigami reiatsu all down his body and a coarse, unrefined aura of Hollow reiatsu all around his head. There was a bit of mask stuck to Ichi's head.
"Oh, Kurosaki-san, you want to break up?"
"Yes."
"Well..." The unshadowed part of Urahara's eyes took on a mischeveous glint. "I didn't know you were going out with someone, Kurosaki-san. May I ask who the unlucky girl is who you want to get rid of?"
Had Kisuke not expected it, he would have presently recieved a mouthful of foot. However, the kick was not wholly unexpected, and instead, Ichi got a footful of Benihime.
"ITAI!"
A/N: This is Japanese for "OW!"
"So, you two want to be split up, eh?"
"Yes, Sandal-Hat. Very observant." Ichigo was not impressed by Urahara's powers of deduction.
"Well, it isn't going to be easy. In fact, it will be a huge pain on both of you."
"Anything to get away from him!" Ichi screamed in unison. Urahara smiled slyly.
"Very well, I'll split you two up. Come here, the both of you."
Ichi trudged quietly after Urahara, following him through the many twists and turns of his shop. "Now, Kurosaki-san, you have to be very calm. Don't be surprised, and don't be afraid. If you are nervous and start shaking, the procedure will fragment both your souls." He moved a bookcase over a couple of feet and opened a door, pulling Ichi inside. It took Ichigo all his power (and much of Ihakai's) not to gasp or scream in shock. It seemed to be a dentist's office with a plethora of oversized tools that Ichigo was sure were not meant to be used on teeth.
"Now, Kurosaki-kun, lay down on that chair." Seeing no way out, Ichi complied. As if by magic, the straps automatically fastened around his arms, waist, and ankles. Ichi was now stuck where he was, for better or worse. "Thank you," he heard Urahara's voice say from somewhere on his right. He went to turn his head, but realized there was a strap around his forehead, too. "Now, be calm," Urahara said from somewhere at his feet. "If you get emotional or try to move even the slightest bit, it will hurt a lot worse." Ichigo could tell that there was a certain degree of severity in the exiled Shinigami's voice.
"Kind of sounds like a death threat, doesn't it?" he asked Ihakai dryly. Ihakai sent him a mental sneer, but it was overlayed with a message of acknowledgement.
"Oh, and don't talk to each other. It will tighten the bonds I am trying to sever." Urahara pulled a lever that Ichi could see out of the corner of his eye, and the process began. The machine started revving, and Urahara unsheathed his Zanpakutou, Benihime. Ichi could not see where Urahara was going, but he seemed to have placed Benihime somewhere in the machine. Ichigo could feel Urahara's smooth, light turquoise reiatsu rising through the air, and he was almost ready for what Urahara said next. It was too loud for Ichigo to hear Benihime's full name, but he did manage to catch the final word out of Urahara's mouth:
"Bankai."
The machine started speeding up, and the whirring got louder. He tried desperately to stay calm and block the whirring noise out of his head at the same time, and he was doing a fairly mediocre job of it too, when it happened.
The first stab wasn't so bad, although Ichigo wasn't expecting it. It seemed like it stabbed through his body, but he only felt it as a dulled sensation, as if it was blocked by adrenaline or some other such numbing force. Fortunately, he was able to prevent himself from exercising the scream he felt in his mind. He heard Ihakai's scream resound along with his in his head. However, while he and Ihakai were steeled for the second stab, it was from a second sword, and it was sharp, piercing his senses from head to toe. The third stab, which was from the original sword, was dull again. The second sword stabbed him with a pang, and he realized that every time the first sword stabbed him, he gained energy, while the second one seemed to take it away. He tried to resist the second sword's pull on his energy, but it stabbed him harder, and the blows sped up.
"Don't resist the flow of energy!" Urahara called to Ichi cheerfully. "If you do, you only hinder the process!
Ichigo decided that if Urahara's bankai was designed for this sort of thing, then there was no helping it. Urahara must be right about the subject he knows best, ne? He resigned himself to the stabbings, which were getting faster and faster, until he could no longer tell when the swords were embedded in his body and when they were not. He wondered if the pain was getting worse or better. He wondered why he couldn't tell...he realized that all his reiatsu was slipping away, faster and faster, and soon his soul would be bared naked for the sword to suck away. Was this Urahara's aim? To seal his soul within a Zanpakutou? Would he have to become the faithful partner to a Shinigami? He tried to think about what kind of Zanpakutou would be, but before he could try to launch his creativity, his consciousness faded away.