Hello my babies!

First off, I'm really digging the story so far and already have ideas for another one forming. Second of all, I'm going to do a brief time skip to when Ichigo finally leaves the human world.

Third, I'm not going to write out the goodbye between herself and her friends. I may flash back to them off and on. But for now I'm leaving it to you- the read's imagination.

Now, for the real reason for this little love letter.

I've been hinting at it a bit in the earlier chapters so for you that didn't catch those hints, Ichigo is still injured from the BW. Her internal organs are a mess of pieces held together by staples, wires (I'm not sure how that even works, but whatever) and thread.

The reason that her injuries haven't healed yet is because of how much strength it took just to kill that fucker Yhwach. And because of that she was kept in an infirmary undergoing serious healing off and on daily for the past month or so since the end of the war. After that, she figured that she'd just heal the rest of the way naturally. Unfortunately, Shiro has lost some of his oomph since he had to lend her a lot of his own strength just to help her stay alive. So, she's healing at the same rate an ordinary human does.

She hasn't gone to Orihime for healing because she's been helping the Soul Reapers get as many of their people back on their feet as possible and is utterly exhausted along with everyone else healing others.

So- no complaints about how weak and wuss-like she's gotten okay.

A few days later-

Ichigo was starting to hate her life.

It wasn't really anything in particular that was making her feel that way. It was just...general occurrences seemed to continually happen before she really had any chance to rest or catch her breath any. And she was simply becoming fed up with it all.

And yet... never let it be said that she wasn't a tenacious person. Or just enough of a masochist to refuse to stop instead of simply continuing to plow ahead like a good soldier would.

Either way, she was simply hating everything that had led her to this point.

The past few days had been particularly terrible for her since she had had to leave everyone and everything that she had ever loved behind so that she could finally leave Karakura behind.

And saying goodbye to others had never been her strong suit. If anything, her habit to hold onto others with a vice like grip that usually only made things much, much harder for her emotionally. This time was no different in that regard since leaving her friends and family had been shockingly more difficult than she could almost bear.

She had nearly dragged poor Rukia with her when she had left. And if not for Chad and Renji quickly grabbing onto the smaller woman, she just might actually be there with her now.

So naturally, she wasn't feeling very engaging upon her arrival in the new world. This fact was simply made ten times worse upon realizing that she had somehow gotten separated from Conrad and the other's during their dimensional travel.

Though she wasn't really sure how that had even happened.

Especially when Yozak had had his arms wound around her waist and had been whispering in her ear about how scary their trip may seem to her since they were using water as a means of travel. But he would hold on to her the whole time so that she wouldn't feel so afraid. He had even grinned at her in a comforting manner when she had looked at him questioningly.

So, she hadn't bothered to comment since the ginger haired demon had obviously never been held under water until he drowned before.

She'd gone through it at least twice already.

So, she already knew exactly what to do when under water. Struggling only wasted energy. Besides, if traveling through water was how the men had gotten to her world, then they could obviously breathe even under the water. At least while traveling between worlds anyways. So, there was no immediate threat of her actually drowning again.

Which was great.

But the fact that she'd somehow gotten separated from everyone else was bad. Especially when she didn't know where they were or vice versa.

Pushing herself up into a sitting position on the ground, she took a second to hold her head in her hand when she heard a loud scream and quickly turned her head to see a frightened young girl with a basket of fruit standing not too far away.

"Hello." She tried, hoping that the girl wasn't afraid of her. But the second that the girl heard her speak the greeting, she dropped the basket that she'd been clutching and turned and ran away screaming.

"Help me! Help me! Demon! There's a demon here!"

Ichigo's lips parted to call out to her, to explain that she wasn't there to do anything bad to anyone but since the girl was so scared she decided to simply let her go. Someone terrified of her wouldn't be very keen to give her any information on where she was anyway.

Sighing, she sat on the ground a moment longer before finally getting to her feet and deciding to try walking away. Especially since the girl's screams for help had brought what looked like a small mob of people wielding pitchforks and other farming equipment from varying very badly built huts and houses made up of straw and stone.

And to be honest she wasn't too keen on them using those pitchforks and other things on her when she hadn't done anything to anyone.

She had just taken a few steps when a horse appeared and a large, blond man with a solid muscular build that could give Chad a run for his money, rode up to her and pulled the horse to a stop.

The man looked at her with piercing blue eyes as he said, "Your highness, there you are. My name is Adalbert von Grantz." He said as he gave her a court-like bow as he tacked on. "And I have been sent to bring you back to the palace."

The guy had apparently never heard the phrase stranger-danger before. And it showed in his confident demeanor. He was one hundred percent sure that he could get her to go with him despite the fact that she had never seen or met him before.

She stared at him, pretending not to understand him despite the fact that Soul Reapers could automatically understand, speak, and comprehend many languages. Even those from other worlds and races. It was an underrated ability in her opinion. But it was great to exploit when you wanted to know things and feigning ignorance wasn't your forte.

Besides the guy was giving off a seriously creepy murder vibe to her and she was picking up on it big time.

"Highness? Can you understand me?" The man asked.

Ichigo spoke to him in mandarin and watched as his polite facade crumbled and he slowly swung himself down from the horse. "Well, this is disappointing," He grumbled, loudly. "You looked cleverer than someone without any knowledge of the demon language. Especially for someone who was chosen to rule us. But they do like to keep their Kings and Queens rather ignorant at first."

Walking towards her, Ichigo tracked his every move until he was close enough to reach out and touch her. Then he lifted both of his arms, hands reaching for her face when she reacted to him as the threat that she knew him to be.

She slapped his hands away from her with enough force to pop bones out of joint and jumped back away from him. Her move obviously surprised him given how he froze up and looked down at his injured hands for a second before throwing his head back and laughing.

"My, you've got some good instincts! And you have such zippy reflexes too. Maybe you are more clever than I first gave you credit for." He paused for a moment and gave her an appraising look before smiling again. "You may not speak the language, but you obviously understand what I'm saying. Don't you girl?"

Ichigo frowned at him, not really expecting him to react quite like that.

Especially when she'd dislocated some of the bones in both of his hands and that shit tended to hurt like a motherfucker. She knew that from personal experience. But then she also wasn't expecting him to figure out that she understood him too. That sucked.

She was warily watching him as he lifted his hands up to examine them before she heard a couple of loud 'pops' and then flexed his hands a few times while grinning smugly at her.

Ichigo bared her teeth in a silent snarl and began to slip into a fighting stance when she heard Conrad's familiar voice shouting her name over and over.

She could also hear the galloping of several horses making their way to her location and tried not to let her relief show on her face. Instead, she kept her eyes on Adalbert and waited to see what he would do when she saw him pull the sword at his hip and sigh.

"Damn that man," He growled out before shifting his attention back to her. "This is nothing personal girl, but I have to kill you now. It's a shame, I would have liked to try sparring with you sometime since your obviously someone who has been well trained in combat. Forgive me." He said as he lifted his sword up over his head, preparing to kill her.

Ichigo let herself tense up and prepare to move to counter the blow when Conrad was suddenly there in front of her with a sword drawn and his teeth bared in a savage looking snarl. "Stay away from her Von Grantz!" Before calling out to the other two men that had come with him, "Don't attack the villagers. They aren't soldiers!"

"But Excellency-" One of the men started to argue when Conrad shouted.

"Disperse!"

The men's horse's force their way through the villagers, causing a lot of scared screaming and frantic running.

"Adalbert, why did you approach our border?" Conrad growled out as Ichigo simply stood about twenty or so feet back from what was obviously going to turn into a life-or-death fight of some kind. And though she knew that she should probably nip it in the bud right then- well, she was curious about what the hell was going on and decided to simply watch and listen instead.

If Conrad got himself in over his head, then she'd step in.

"You're the same as ever Lord Weller. A hero among cowards!"

"You're one to speak of cowards, traitor!" Conrad hissed as he lunged forward, and his sword met the other mans. Ichigo frowned and wondered what Conrad meant by calling the other man a traitor when she felt the air stir around her, and she was suddenly snatched up off of the ground by something.

Don't get her wrong, as a Soul Reaper she was used to being high above the ground. So, she wasn't afraid of heights or anything. However, this did make things a bit difficult for her as far as observing/listening to the fight below went. Not only that but if Conrad got hurt...well, she'd be upset.

Though she could still clearly hear their weapons clash together more than once, as well as a few more insults spill forth from the two men. It wasn't exactly helpful to the situation. However, she did find it just a tad bit strange that whatever had snatched her up off of the ground was flying in circles above the two men.

As if it were just waiting for someone to come out the definite winner.

Curious Ichigo finally bothered to tilt her head back to get a look at the creature holding onto her and let out a choked screamed. "Holy hell it's a flying skeleton!" Which was then followed by her urgently yelling, "Conrad! Get me away from this thing before it feeds me to some ghouls!"

Her screaming must have startled the pair fighting below her.

Because she no longer heard the sounds of metal on metal, nor any insults either. Instead, when she looked down, she saw both men staring at her dumbfounded. As if she were crazy or something.

Had the two men never faced a necromancer before? Did they even have such things in this world?

Ah...but her days during the Blood War had really done a number one her poor psyche. Especially if she was afraid that necromancers were going to randomly pop out of the woodworks at any moment just to torment her.

Still...Conrad could at least have some sympathy for her. She was traumatized after all.

The jerk. She thought as she shouted again in an indignant manner, "Hey! Being eaten by ghouls is a legitimate concern for a girl like me. I'm easy prey here!"

This time she really could actually hear Conrad beginning to laugh at her. And that just made her feel even worse. And if that wasn't bad enough, Adalbert was kind of starting to laugh at her too.

He was kind of laughing so hard that he was having trouble breathing from how he was doubled over.

Ichigo's face flamed as she tried to understand what was so funny here. After all, if there were flying skeleton's around, then ghouls weren't such a large leap in logic. Were they? Plus, it wasn't as if she were entirely wrong.

She was technically easy prey to certain predators in this world.

At least for the moment anyway.

Sighing because neither man was finished laughing yet, and she was embarrassed, she then tilted her head back to speak to the skeleton. "Hi, do you think you can do me a solid and fly us off into the sunset? We can come back once they're both done killing each other."

The skeleton chattered at her, and she found herself sort of smiling when it did as she requested. It even waved bye to the men as it went, which was just great.

Especially when she thought she heard Conrad suddenly start shouting after them as Adalbert slowly trudged back to his horse and mounted it to leave.

Conrad wound up chasing her and her new friend, Skully, for two whole miles before she'd finally asked the skeleton to please let her down.

Of course, when she'd finally asked to be put down, Conrad had been scaling a tree in an effort to reach her before Skully could fly off any further.

And then once she was on the ground again, he had had to climb back down. Which had caused him to miss a step somewhere around the lower part of the tree's branches and fall a short way to the ground. Where he landed in her arms because she hadn't been willing to allow him to actually get injured just for laughing at her earlier.

Ichigo was many things, but downright cruel wasn't really one of them. Though she knew that she could be a bit of a troll at times. And even took some pride in that fact. Still...she also did her best to take care of those under her protection. Even when she was screwing with them a little bit just for funsies.

The problem with catching Conrad was that her unhealed internal injuries, decided to start flaring up in the absolutely worst sort of way. The fireball of agony that she found herself experiencing was...well she had experienced a lot of things over the years. But the only thing that she could really liken it to was being torn inside out somehow.

The scream that left her throat was blood chilling.

Especially to Conrad who had quickly realized that she was hurt somehow and grabbed her and run like hell for his horse and quickly force it into an all-out gallop.

Every step the galloping horse made, jarring her abused organs more and more. After that, she started to go in and out of consciousness. Which was terrible since the demon was trying to get her to tell him what was wrong, but she couldn't seem to form the words enough to tell him anything. At least not coherently.

She wasn't sure when she finally lost consciousness completely. But once she did- she dreamed of blood, sadness, loss, and the smug laughing face of Yhwach staring down at her from the heavenly throne while the world burned to ashes.

Conrad didn't know what had happened or what went wrong.

All he knew was that Ichigo had been fine one second, and then the next...she was screaming so loudly. The sound sending a skitter of terror down his spine as she started to fall. He moved faster than he had in years just to catch her and prevent her from hitting the ground.

After that, he could honestly say that he had never been so scared before in his life.

Not even during his time spent fighting in the war twenty years ago.

He'd grabbed her and run to his horse quickly. And then once there he'd tried to get her to tell him what was wrong once the horse was running, but she hadn't been able to respond coherently.

The strained and pained choking sounds that escaped her throat with each gallop tore at his heart and then... She'd lost consciousness entirely. Her body completely going limp in his grasp and his fear for her spiked exponentially. And if not for the fact that he could still feel her breathing, he would have thought her already dead and gone.

Without knowing what was happening to her or what was wrong he couldn't take her back to the cottage that Gunter was currently at, waiting for them. It was simply too risky. He only had one choice to help her and that was to ride as hard as he could to Covenant Castle, to get her to the healers there.

So that was what he did despite knowing that the Castle was located almost three hours away. He just hoped that Ichigo could hang on that long.

Hugging her tighter against his chest, he urged his horse on, praying to the Great One that their Queen remained alive until he could get her to the castle.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed since the beginning of his frantic trip back home. All he knew was that from time-to-time Ichigo's dead weight was difficult to hold onto. And he spent a fair amount of time just talking to her in a low, comforting but desperate tone.

Pleading with her to just stay.

Her kingdom needed her. Her people needed her. He needed her too. After all, what good was a soldier without his Queen to command him?

He told her about other things as well. He spoke about the rich history of his people.

How they and humans had once stood together as friends. How much he missed that sort of unity because he felt deep down inside of his heart of hearts that humans and the Demon Tribe should both stand together as friends again.

He told her about his family and his love for them.

He told her about his beautiful mother, the former Demon Queen and how she had ruled the kingdom. And also, about his two brothers. He told her about some of the mischief both he and Yozak had used to get themselves into as children and young men away at school.

And finally, the gates of the castle were within his sight. His heart was beating so fast in his chest at the kernel of hope that he felt. So much so that he started shouting for the castle healer, Gisela long before he reached them. He must have been raising all kinds of hell by the time he reached the castle grounds because the healer was waiting for him.

He spotted her standing beside his older brother Gwendal who looked just as pissed as he always did. If not more so because of the noise.

He didn't even bother to pull his horse to a stop before he was sliding himself and Ichigo from the animal's back and running towards Gisela, while giving her what information he had to try and let her know that her newest patient was their next Queen and should be treated with the upmost care.

Once that was done Gisela began rushing through the halls with Conrad fast on her heels until they came to the nearest room that she intended to use to take care of Ichigo while Gwendal speed walked along with them barking out orders for someone to go and grab as much of the medical supplies, bandages, medicines, and other things to be brought to the room immediately.