Whoo! We're back again, everyone! Sorry it took so long on the latest chapter; been really busy lately. Fortunately, that left plenty of time to come up with more useless crap to stuff into this fanfiction!

I'M BACK, BITCHES.

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"Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap!"

He'd gotten soft over those three weeks with only two (technically one) hollow(s) to fight. Ichigo leapt from rooftop to rooftop, his shihakusho billowing behind him. The white masked beast bounding behind him rapidly gained ground, gnashing its teeth viciously.

The hollow in question resembled a large weasel, the hole in its chest vanishing and reappearing as great tufts of white fur flapped over it. Which wouldn't really have been a problem, were the hollow not the size of a minivan.

"Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap!"

Ichigo grasped the handle of Zangetsu, his eternally released zanpakuto. This had gone on long enough; the hollow had already given him several nasty cuts from its razor sharp claws, and it needed to be stopped now. Besides; he didn't feel right running from a fight. Planting his sandaled foot firmly on the rooftop, Ichigo mentally gauged the distance between the speeding hollow and his zanpakuto.

He didn't wield it like a weapon; Ichigo grasped Zangetsu as if he were merely an extension of his arm. A feeling of calm waved over him, his eyes closed.

The high pitched screech of the hollow filled the air, and the otherworldly beast hurtled itself as hard as it could at Ichigo.

Only to be sliced cleanly in half with an almost silent schhhhick.

It looked a bit stunned, for a moment, realizing it had just been split horizontally. It's shock quickly faded, though, as it burst into a black cloud of particles. It's soul cleansed, the hollow dissipated. Ichigo stood, rubbing his sore lower back. The bastard had nicked him pretty badly; pulling his hand away, he found a bit of blood, and wiped it on his legs before re-sheathing Zangetsu. Sighing with relief, he scanned the area quickly before beginning his return home. Oddly enough, there seemed to be more hollows about than usual. He'd felt several appear for short periods of time, and then abruptly vanish. It was his best guess that Uryu was lurking about, taking care of the stragglers. He shrugged it off, and continued.

It had been a little difficult, the first day back; he'd grown accustomed to the other world's altered sense of perception, and it skewed his view of the real world. Or, at least, what he believed to be the real world. He'd been through so much insanity in the past few weeks that he wasn't quite sure what was real anymore. Interdimensional vortexes, dimensional collapses, genetic reconstruction, time travelers, rabid fan girls – he needed a vacation.

After about ten minutes of thorough searching as he traveled home and finding nothing, he clambered in through his bedroom window, catching Kon (in Ichigo's body) by surprise. Kon, or the rogue mod soul that Ichigo used to inhabit his body while he completed his supernatural Soul Reaper work, was sitting at the desk in Ichigo's room, hunched over a laptop computer, typing with gusto.

"And… then… they… fucked… the… en-"

"What are you doing?"

Kon leapt into the air, eyes wide. His kneecaps slammed hard against the bottom of the desk, and he collapsed over to the side with a shriek of terror mingled with sharp pain.

Which was both hilarious and slightly perturbing, as Ichigo was pretty certain his body was completely incapable of producing such a high pitched noise.

Funny. But wrong.

"Don't you know better than to sneak up on someone like that?!" Kon yelled before Ichigo clasped a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. He slammed his Substitute Soul Reaper badge against his living body's forehead, the mod soul popping out forcefully from the back of his skull with a light tink! as it hit the wooden floor. Ichigo sighed heavily, shifting back into his original body, already feeling the pain in his kneecaps.

Just another pain to worry about, he thought wistfully. Kon was replaced into the stuffed lion, though Ichigo did so slowly. It was only a matter of time before-

"-nd you always bully me around, just because you're bigger – a bigger jackass, maybe! And that's another thing – when is Rukia coming back, huh? Did you ev-"

Jesus, he hadn't even slowed his angry rant at Ichigo even when he wasn't inside a real body. He dropped Kon back on the floor and collapsed on his bed, facedown. He'd had enough for the day; he wasn't certain why, but he'd found that he grew exhausted much more quickly since his return. He had only been back a few days (finding that the strange Doctor with the time machine had left him at the exact same moment he'd been transported to another world,) and though his strength began to come back, something still nagged at him.

He knew there was something about the other world that made it harder for spiritual pressure to thrive. Hell, the entire time he'd been there, he'd only seen one hollow (not counting Grimmjow.) As a matter of fact, he wasn't even sure what happened to Grimmjow. He rolled over onto his side, trying to sleep, but it kept pestering him. The thought of an Espada, (whatever the hell that was,) running around with amnesia made him nervous.

Because you're weak, King.

Ichigo's eyes snapped open, and he sat bolt upright. "Shut up! I'm trying to sleep."

Aw, what's the matter, King? Ichigo's pale inner hollow that had emerged upon his rescue of Rukia from her imprisonment in Soul Society. Dincha' miss me?

That caught Ichigo's attention. Pieces began to come together, like a puzzle. In the other world, he hadn't heard his inner hollow; as a matter of fact, he hadn't even heard Zangetsu until he returned home. Disturbingly enough, it had been Grimmjow to point it out to him.

You're kinda' thick, ya' know that?

"Quiet," Ichigo growled, scratching his orange haired head in frustration. "I'm thinking."

Don't go hurtin' yourself, King, his nameless hollow spoke sarcastically. I'd just ha~a~ate to hafta take over for ya'.

"I said I'm trying to think!"

"Don't go hurting yourself," he heard his younger sister Karin say as she passed his bedroom door. Ichigo's eye twitched in frustration, forcing himself to keep his voice down. It wouldn't do for everyone to think he was crazy.

I'm not crazy…

'Course ya' aren't, King.

"Dad," Karin yelled as she descended the stairs. "Ichigo's going crazy and talking to himself again."

"Don't worry!" he heard from deeper in the house as he clutched his head in his hands with a sigh. "That's probably just schizophrenia or something! He'll get over it in a week."

"… And you dare to claim that you deserve a medical license?"

"… What medical license?"

"Damn. I need a vacation," Kon whined as he reclined on Ichigo's wooden chair. Ichigo ignored him and rolled over, trying desperately to sleep. A vacation sounds pretty good, really… although he knew that wasn't likely to happen. The havoc Aizen had wreaked in Soul Society still hadn't been completely dealt with, and there was still danger abroad… He just needed to sleep on it.

He tossed and turned fitfully for a while, and had finally grown comfortable when he heard his father speaking downstairs. At this time of night, not such an unusual occurrence.

For a moment, he wondered who he was talking to, before deciding that it wasn't worth moving for and tried to go back to sleep.

When a dark figure hurled itself through the air and landed directly on top of him.

Or, more specifically, with a terrifyingly recognizable 'Squeeeee!'

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