A/N: Hello! This is my first time writing fan fiction so I would just like to say thank you in advance to anyone who chooses to review this. The first four chapters were all written at the same time to get the story moving.

Bleach and all products thereof are copyright to Tite Kubo, et al.

Thursday, February 13, 2003

Ichigo's eyelids flickered as sunlight slowly tracked across them. He opened his eyes and slowly sat up, realizing he didn't remember going to bed or even coming home, or…the events of the park suddenly hit him like a truck. Had it been a dream? He began to look about to orient himself when suddenly he heard Alan's voice. "Don't freak out about the time, your family and everyone else all just think you're sick," it said in a quiet tone.

Ichigo's head whipped to his left, toward the closet. Alan was sitting where Rukia used to sleep, leaning against one of its walls with his arms crossed behind his head. He looked somewhere between bored and contemplative. Ichigo was struck by the fact he seemed to be wearing some kind of fatigues or jumpsuit he'd never seen before that had a pixilated grey color, as well as black combat boots. The fact the man was yet another stranger winding up in his closet wasn't lost on him, but entirely beside the point at the moment.

"What the hell are you doing in my room?!" Ichigo found himself rasping. He had been of the mind to be quiet, but his vocal chords hurt and did most of the work for him. He was immediately struck by the memory of screaming, in particular, and began to wonder why his arms no longer hurt.

Alan stood up, towering over the teen sitting on the bed. His expression was droll. "Doing overwatch on you, and being here for when you woke up so I could answer the questions you'd inevitably ask and you wouldn't wander around being suspiciously pissed off all day. How do you think you got here anyway?"

Ichigo blinked and scowled, before glancing sideways at his clock. It was 12:13 PM. "Ahhh! What the hell?!" he croaked, only to be pegged in the head with an eraser Alan had just picked up.

"I told you not to worry about it," the man said, pulling out Ichigo's desk chair and sitting down on it. "Anyway, let's get this over with. You have questions, ask them."

"What the hell was that thing?" Ichigo said, his tone growing completely serious. He stared at Alan with unbridled intensity.

"You mean this?" Alan asked, holding up the gun in one hand by the barrel. It was now dark gunmetal grey all over and streaked with black, as if it had been scorched in a fire. Even the plastic in the handle looked dull and seemed to be stained with dried blood. Alan regarded it casually: "Officially, the Pistol, Experimental, Energy, Spiritual, XM139; unofficially the Morning Star. Single-shot reiatsu weapon for personal defense, rated for targets equivalent to what you know as an Adjuchas-class Menos. This one has been custom-modified to unlock your potential. The design is antiquated and predates USSOCOM jurisdiction over supernatural and paranormal affairs. It's basically a scaled down version of something that once upon a time was more like an artillery piece."

Ichigo felt his face twitching as a thousand follow-up questions screamed in his mind. "You said 'unlock my potential'…how?" he grated out at last.

Alan continued to inspect the weapon, as if he hadn't seen one before or in quite some time. "It comes from a time when what you call reiryoku was not commonly found in our forces and they had no internal reservoir to draw from, so it was designed to draw from the ambient environment instead. You probably noticed that some of its operations strongly resembled the powers of the Quincy. Anyway, this one was modified to also dump energy into you through the use of…well, let's just say it did. It poured everything it could into you and everything else it fired normally."

"Are—are you telling me that thing could've been even more powerful?!" Ichigo got out, disbelief obvious on his face.

"It would have been able to kill or heavily wound everything you fought below the ranking Espada, and would likely have significantly damaged their lower-ranking members," Alan said, looking at the teen. There was now an emptiness in the man's eyes and a frost to his voice that set Ichigo's teeth on edge.

In a flash of anger Ichigo found himself hunched forward, the man's collar in his clenched fist. "Why the hell did you give me something like that to use in Karakura?!" he demanded. There was rage in his eyes and written all across his face; he was close enough he could see his own reflection in Alan's eyes, and he saw it.

Alan didn't seem impressed or perturbed in the slightest, and he spoke with the exact same dangerously measured tone. "First, because there was no guarantee as to what you might've drawn the attention of or run into and I have no interest in sending you on a suicide mission. Second, because I made an informed assumption that you would absorb a significant amount of its output given the circumstances and history should you have needed to use it. Third, because I made an informed assumption you would realize exactly what it was capable of after activating it and would aim appropriately." With that, he used the husk of the gun to push Ichigo's wrist to one side, personally satisfied that none of the reasons was explicitly a lie.

Ichigo loosened his grip and let Alan move his hand, sitting back. Alan himself also leaned back and put the gun on the table. "Was that Hollow…completely destroyed?" Ichigo asked.

"No. The Morning Star gathers energy sort of like a Quincy, but its discharge functions somewhat like kidō. The Hollow was purified."

"What about that girl's ghost?" he said, suddenly remembering. Had the gun torn her soul apart for her reishi?

"I took care of that. She got a konsō. She's probably integrating after crossing over as we speak." Alan didn't bother to specify how he'd done it or where exactly she'd gone. He doubted Ichigo really cared about the implications. Not yet, anyway.

"Why was it disguised as a flare gun?" Ichigo asked lamely. He realized he was now deliberately avoiding the most burning questions he wanted to ask.

"Because it fits the form factor of one and in some ways also the function, so the packaging is not only less likely to raise questions from people who don't need to know, but also serves as a useful reminder to its user that it shouldn't be treated as a true weapon," Alan said.

"…What do you mean 'in some ways also the function,' and 'a true weapon'?" Ichigo asked, eyes narrowed, "You just told me it could potentially kill a Números or Privaron Espada without issue."

"It only has one shot," Alan said casually, "so suppose you missed. As far as it's a weapon, it's one of last resort. However, it draws enough attention that any potential reinforcements one might have available are likely to rush to provide aid." Alan smiled that oddly cryptic smile again "You know that everyone in Western Tokyo with even the slightest degree of spiritual attunement felt it with how you angled it up, right?"

Ichigo's eyes went wide "Then that means they know, everyone—" he began.

Alan crossed his arms and shook his head. "They know it went off, and certainly everyone in Karakura who could detect such things would've felt the reiatsu it emanated, but it's not you, and there was nothing recognizable about that reiatsu to anyone. To them it would have seemed very unusual in both character and kind. If anything, they're still both alarmed and confused by that fact…" he trailed off, casting his glance about as if he could see things occurring beyond the room. "But for all they know, you were here in bed sleeping the whole time. Fortunately, it was confusing enough that even your dad and sisters didn't think to check on you very first thing," he concluded. It was fortunate indeed, but he'd banked on it. Since all of Ichigo's friends, family, cohorts, and watchers relied upon remote perception, and Ichigo had heretofore no reiatsu to remotely perceive, they could only confirm he was okay visually. That had given him an ample window of time to get him back to where he was "supposed" to be.

A silence lingered between them for well over a minute at that, Ichigo looking at the floor and Alan appearing to study a wall. Ichigo slid his legs off the bed and stood, turning to look out the window. "If it had worked, wouldn't they have been able to detect my reiatsu?"

"You're wearing the jammer, remember?" Alan replied. It was hopefully clear why he'd insisted on it.

"…So did it work?" Ichigo asked, turning. He found Alan putting on a dark glove and instantly had a flashback to several years prior, even though it looked nothing like the one from then.

"Let's find out," Alan said. In a single smooth and inhumanly fast motion he rose and slammed a palm into Ichigo's chin.

Ichigo grabbed his jaw in pain and staggered back a few steps from the blow. "You bastard, that really hurt!" he croaked through gritted teeth, looking up to see his own body standing for a moment. Alan caught it by the sides and directed its fall onto the bed without much effort before turning to face him. Ichigo stared back at him wide-eyed, and the room was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Presences immediately outside the room—his dad's was the nearest—and gradually farther and farther made themselves known in his mind, and Ichigo slowly looked down to find a familiar outfit clothing him.

Ichigo looked up at the man to see what looked like a genuine smile. He could only see him for a moment before the world went blurry with tears. Ichigo brought a sleeve up to his face, wiping hard. He wasn't going to give the man the satisfaction of seeing him cry, even if this was all a result of his doing. I can finally…Ichigo thought, and the rest went unsaid even in his thoughts, images of his friends and family flickering before him, and of course of her. He didn't know how to put into words how he felt.

Alan, for his part, knew there was no need to interfere and was of no mind to gawk at an emotional teenager, and so he turned and busied himself with retrieving something from the closet. By the time Ichigo had composed himself enough to continue, the man had slid the remains of the pistol into one of his straps and was doing something with a rifle the length of Ichigo's entire arm. Everything about it looked incredibly destructive, although he could sense no reiatsu coming from it…or from Alan for that matter.

Alan caught his stare before looking down at the gun and back up to Ichigo, offering "M161, Moonlight Scythe. Insurance for last night, didn't have time to drop it off. And no, you're not the only one who's got a jammer. Anyway, I should really get going, and you should probably get back in your body and get to school. We'll talk later." The man shouldered the rifle and made as if to leave, before stopping. "Oh, and Ichigo—direct skin-to-skin contact will override the jammer's effect." Then he was gone.

Ichigo blinked and looked around, wondering What the hell, can he teleport? He quickly replayed what he had just seen over and over again. It was then he noticed the curtains billowing slightly from a window not entirely closed. He wasn't sure of the extent of his newly returned awareness yet, but all the evidence indicated that Alan was merely doing something like shunpo, sonido, or hirenkyaku. He hoped his senses were still sluggish, because if they were anything like what they were even after the first invasion of Seireitei, Alan could literally give Yoruichi a run for her money.

He sighed and put the thought aside, going to his bed and getting back into his body. He still had two more questions that he felt he knew the answers to already and wouldn't like having confirmed. First, what was the deal with the mixed-color energy signatures like his sisters and Chad? Second, what had caused all those Hollows to appear the night before?

He mentally filed the questions away and practiced looking tired and put out a few times. It didn't feel much different from the way he normally looked, so he got up and went to get dressed. Of course, nobody was downstairs to greet him when he turned up, Yuzu and Karin both at school and his dad in the clinic proper, so he left a short note that read simply "Felt better, went to class, sorry," on the table and headed to school. He had decided to continue wearing the glasses, mostly because to stop so suddenly would create suspicion but also partly because he wouldn't let his irritation the previous day be in vain. Looking at his own arm and finding it obviously didn't register, he was left with a third question: what color was his reiatsu? He put that out of mind with the others.

As he continued walking he could feel his friends' reiatsu increase with every footfall, and felt a certain spring in his step at the sensation.