Ichigo Kurosaki remembered where he was the night before; in his house, in his bed beside his wife, snuggling soundly after putting their son to bed. He knew for a fact he never got up in the night to deal with a Hollow's appearance, and he was positive he didn't then fall asleep on the top of a building still dressed in his shihakusho with Zangetsu beside him.

Picking up his sword as he rose, Ichigo looked around the horizons, gazing upon the city he did not recognize. Even if he dealt with Hollows, he never left Karakura's city limits to do so: he was pretty sure his badge never alerted him outside that range. And there were no such bundles of tall buildings like those around him that populated his hometown. How did he appear here?

A roar of cries suddenly caught his attention, and he ran to the edge of the building. Instead of finding a monster in the middle of the street startling a soul, people on the street were smiling and waving above them, to a man in a jetpack flying over the cars and waving back. Ichigo watched him ludicrously as the man flew down the street. When the hell did they have jetpacks designed like that?

He fished his soul badge from his clothes and glared at the wooden-carved skull. "Oi, Rukia," he spoke into it. "I know you can hear me. I'm not sure where I am or how I got here. Mind making this a two-way call and bringing me up to speed?"

He watched the badge rest still in his hand. He expected the eyes to flash alive and her voice to respond. The least he could accept was flashes of morse code or the blaring alarm to at least signal she could hear him. But nothing came.

Ichigo closed his eyes and sighed. "Come on, midget, I know you have someone listening in on this even when you aren't around. At least have them send something." His antagonizing still couldn't bring about a sign.

I don't like this, Ichigo, the young voice of his zanpakuto warned in his head. The spread of spiritual energy in this town is minimal, but something lingers in the air. I cannot feel home nearby.

"I feel it too, Zangetsu," the orange-haired man consoled his blade, bringing him to rest on his back. "It's too light. I don't like it. Let's figure out where we are." And with a quick shunpo, Ichigo leapt from the rooftop to the building across the way, and then further.

He had been to big cities before, for work mostly. Only once for a date before he got married, and another time for Kazui's sake, but for work every other time. Aside from Chad touring the world for his boxing matches, all of his friends and family remained relatively close in Karakura; never much of a reason to be in the bigger towns. But Tokyo called his name often, and though it was for work it had become a town where he knew his way around the streets, and what buildings belonged where.

Which was why, when he finally stepped up to a sign blasting, "Welcome to Tokyo," in red neon lights in broad daylight, he knew something was wrong.

So he dropped to the streets, uncaring of his looks as a soul or of people who could pass right through him to be bothered by his presence. Something was amiss, but what? What could tell him how he woke up separate from his body? What could explain how buildings that shouldn't exist took the space of others? What could answer the suddenly important question of the man passing him by with a rhinoceros head atop his human body?

Ichigo stared, bewildered by the man's appearance passing him by, and leading him to stare at a woman with arachnid features. Which led his eyes to a man with orange wings folded against his back. The closer around him he looked, the more he found with extra appendages or animalistic body parts, colored hair that put his own to shame, and eventually a regular-looking man twice his own height suddenly rounding the corner just to cross the street.

"What the hell?" he muttered, flash-stepping into the air to find the oddities of the people around him continuing down the street for blocks. He always assumed people like the late Captain Komura existed beyond the captain he knew, but to this extent? In the living world?

These aren't arrancars either, Zangetsu noted, watching with him as a snake-headed lady aided a regular-looking old woman crossing in front of traffic. I sense almost no soul pressure from any of these creatures. We are not in the Soul Worlds, but I am not sure we are in the world of the living anymore.

Was this supposed to be some odd level in Hell replicating the living world, Ichigo wondered. Had he actually died and gone to Hell while he was asleep? What other realms were there that he hadn't been to that could make sense of what he was seeing?

An explosion rocked the air, an event everyone reacted to just to assure Ichigo he wasn't completely dissected from the world. He would have to fly home and figure out what was going on later; maybe even commotion could help make sense of where he was.

What he shunpoed to seemed to be a crime-in-the-making. A bank with its front wall blowing out smoke and its door strewn across the street. As many of the characters of civilians backed away and gave the destruction space, and a few others stepped forward as though acting officers to form a perimeter, Ichigo flashed through the smoke and into the main lobby. Many people, young and old, had been pushed into a corner to sit, two men looking like mantises standing before them. Across the room stood another trio, two men of regular size and another a yellow, rotund quadruped analyzing the big entrance between them and the bank's vault.

Separate from them all was a man, his body half buried in rubble and debris from the bank's destroyed entrance, and his soul laying feet away from that. Ichigo approached him first, kneeling down beside his soul as they both stared at his lifeless body.

"I died," the soul muttered breathlessly, reaching out to brush his hand over the broken chains on his body's chest. There was at least one thing in this world familiar to him, Ichigo mulled roughly.

"Yeah," the orange-haired soul answered him, swinging Zangetsu off his back. "It happens."

The soul looked at him with a start, while Ichigo unwrapped the band around his hilt baring its engraved end. "You…you can see me?" the soul asked him. "Are you a hero?"

The substitute Soul Reaper could feel his frown dip further. "No, I'm not. Name's Ichigo. I'm just here to help you pass on." The soul's eyes rose to follow up the blade of Zangetsu, and Ichigo shook his head. "Not with that; with this." He tapped his finger on the kanji engraved on the butt of his zanpakuto's hilt. "Can't tell ya I know where we are, but if you had a soul chain, there should still be a road to the Soul Society. It's where all spirits go. Stay too long out here and it doesn't turn out pretty."

The soul tried to push himself across the rubble, eventually passing through it as he pushed off the air Ichigo stood on. "But—but my…" He twisted his head to look across the room, and Ichigo followed. Amid the pile of hostages huddled in the corner was a woman cradling a child, not staring at the criminals or each other, but at him, and the soul, and the body it belonged to. He didn't need to hear the soul explain himself further, especially not when the woman's bright orange hair reminded him of his own wife.

"I'll do what I can to make sure they don't go where you will until it's their time," Ichigo promised the soul. "It'll be a while of a wait for you, but it's better to let them grow old first. Sorry, but you'll only hurt them if you try to stick around."

The soul latched on to the sleeves of Ichigo's shihakusho, looking into the orange-haired man's eyes with desperation. "Please," was the only word he asked.

"I will," he promised, tapping the butt of his sword onto the soul's forehead and watching him sparkle away into the air. Once he was finally gone, Ichigo took a quick look at each of the criminals spread about the room. He rarely used his soul to intervene in situations like this, and more uncommonly found himself nearby enough to think about it, but what else was he supposed to do than prevent more souls from passing on too soon?

He never got around to it, as purple smoke flooded the bank before he even took a step. One of the 'dolphins' holding civilians hostages shouted, "He's here!" To elaborate on his behalf, a black tentacle shot through the smoke to grab him and drag him out the building. Several more followed suit, binding the other men holding people hostage or trying to break into the vault. One even reaches out Ichigo's way, but he shunpos over to the crazy cast of people still huddled in the corner watching the same thing he was. That last tentacle propped at the body still half-buried under rubble, so when it tried to gently move aside and picked up the body, Ichigo willed Zangetsu free of its wrappings and held the blade before him and the hostages protectively.

As the smoke slowly cleared and thinned back to the outside world, one man walked forward to approach them. Dressed in a green jumpsuit decorated with black highlights that matched his curly hair and a dark golden cape with a collar to rise below his chin, Ichigo thought him reminiscent of the costumes Kanoji had made for Kon the times he was away in the spirit worlds. The black tendrils that flowed from his arms, many held behind him probably still holding the many criminals and one gently cradling the body of the dead anteater-man put to rest the assumption there could have been a connection with him and the television star.

That certainty lost all meaning as many of the women behind him gasped audibly and shouted, "Deku!" Quite a few had no hesitation rising and running right through Ichigo, throwing off both him and the man across the room. But those same colorful and anthropomorphic women treated the green-colored guy like he was a superstar, and when he folded under the attention and greeted them like one, Ichigo let out a sigh of relief knowing it at least wasn't a Hollow he had to deal with.

Holstering Zangetsu on his back once more and sighing, Ichigo walked past the crowd and their star and back into the street. Police officers were binding the thieves in large, metal restraints; the big guy even shrunk down to a more normal-looking man with a round head just to fit in his own bindings. Much as this place wanted to call itself Japan, he was most certainly in a fever dream. Maybe this was one of those other branches of Soul Societies he had heard about in passing; but then why call itself Tokyo if it was supposed to be halfway around the world?

He pulled his Substitute badge from his shihakusho and stared at the lifeless device with a frown once more. "Come on, Rukia, I know you can hear me. Tell me something."

"Pardon me, sir."

"If this is because of 'midget,' then we're even," he continued on, passing by the police who ran past him without so much as a nudge. "You don't get to use Carrot Top again."

"Uh, sir?"

The badge remained lifeless in his hand, and adding atop that another glance at the surrounding strangers more inhuman than familiar only grew his confusion and frustration. "Fine! I'm lost and I need your help, Captain! Now give me a goddamn answer!"

A hand clapped gently on his shoulder, and a cell phone thrusted into his vision. "You can use my phone to contact, if you'd like," the man behind him voiced their offer, "but please stop shouting. It could worry someone."

Ichigo twisted his neck, looking at the green-haired man from before smiling waverly at him. "Yeah, sorry," he apologized, lowering his voice and fiddling with his badge between his fingers. "I'm just trying to—"

His lips clamped shut in an instant. His head turned slowly before he was looking the other man in the eyes again, finding them staring back at him instead of through him. The physical contact of the hand on his shoulder became heavier. "You can see me?"

The man returned his question with an equally confused look, but any follow up from either of them went silent as the air suddenly became heavy on the Soul Reaper's shoulders. That was spiritual pressure, and a recognizable torrent at that. He knew who it belonged to, and knew where it was supposed to be; but nothing around him reflected the stories of Muken that Shunsui explained to him. The green-haired man had already turned his head in the direction of the source before Ichigo looked into the distance with him.

For better or worse, Ichigo wasn't lost alone.

There was chaos in the rebuilt Tartarus. Shigaraki was gone — absent from his own cell. Not escaped — not naturally — but gone entirely from their radar. Even the chip that should have picked up his location anywhere across Japan even seconds after his movement registered nothing across the country or the seas. The largest terror the world had ever seen, and in his place in his cell sat another, strapped to a chair and bound in black that covered all but his hair, his mouth and his left eye.

"You must be my new wardens," Aizen Souske greeted the men on the other side of the glass. "I wasn't aware Central was transferring me. Is this Kurotsuchi's design?"