Ichigo doesn't even realize that he's wielding a sword until after he's cut the Hollow's arm off, it's howl of pain shrill to his ears as the severed limb lands somewhere behind him with a decisively wet splat. It's weightless as far as he can tell, and it's almost as long as he is tall, but that's all he's able to glean about the sword from his newfound sight. At least I can see it, he muses as he notes that it's as red as Rukia…was.

"No… I meant for only half…" Her voice comes from where he had left her on the pavement, but she's no longer red. She's greyish-white now, like Kasumi had appeared to him earlier, and he can only assume- "…I have lost all of my powers…" -precisely that.

He opens his mouth to apologize, even though doing so won't give Rukia any of her powers back but isn't even given the chance to do so as the Hollow, much more defined now in varying shades of black, lunges towards him. Reflex kicks in and he swings the sword as he dodges to the left, cutting off the Hollow's right leg below its knee.

The Hollow bellows, whether in pain or anger, and twists towards him with its remaining momentum as it begins to fall. Instinctively knowing that it means to try and bite him, he swings his sword up and through its head and is surprised when it just starts dissolving.

"Did I get it?" He asks faintly, watching as the hollow's massive form slowly disappears. It honestly looks weird considering it's comprised of blackish energy, layered on top of… well, Ichigo still doesn't know how to describe it. Everything is still in varying shades of black, aside from the forms of Rukia and Yuzu, so it looks like it's just melting into the blackness that makes up the road and air in his sight.

He's vaguely aware of Rukia saying something in response as exhaustion washes over him, and then-

"ICHIGO!"

Ichigo jerks awake at the cry of his name, his father's typical morning greeting accompanied by a jump kick into his bed, and reflexively reaches for his guide cane before he remembers that he might have broken it when he had attacked that Shinigami, Rukia, last night. He changes course at the last second, and just barely manages to capture the dull red blur that is his father's foot before it can connect with his stomach, not that it does much to keep his father from landing in his bed.

"Why are you attacking your blind son in his sleep?!" Ichigo snaps at his father as he shoves him off of his bed and then scowls down at the man. "And what do you and mom know about Shinigami and Hollows? What is spirit energy and why is mine so strong? And does that spirit energy stuff have anything to do with the fact that I can kind of see now, only it's all weird?"

His father lays there on the floor for a long moment, a serious expression on his face as he seems to consider all of Ichigo's questions, and Ichigo uses this time to study his father's features and commit them to memory. "So that really was a Shinigami that broke into your room last night," his father says, sounding somewhat resigned. "I had hoped that you would never come into contact with that world so soon, but it seems like it was inevitable."

"Could you really not see her?" Ichigo asks, recalling the moment when his father had come to check on him last night.

"Why don't you tell me what happened last night first?" His father suggests instead, to which Ichigo scowls at him again. "And then I'll explain my side of things," he adds placatingly.

"Fine, but you're not going to get out of answering my questions," Ichigo darkly responds, and then he makes himself comfortable on his bed while his father sits up on the floor. "So that Shinigami, Rukia, was looking for a Hollow that was in the area, but she couldn't sense it because my spirit energy is so high that it was obstructing her senses or something like that. The Hollow attacked you, Karin and Yuzu, but Rukia said that it was looking for me and then she got injured while protecting me from the Hollow because she thought I was going to offer it my soul. She said the only way I could fight it was if I was a Shinigami and that she would give me half of her powers, but I think I accidentally took all of her reiryoku? And now I can sort of see everything, only it's all shades of black while you're a dull red…and Rukia was red too before I took her powers…"

"So, I guess now would be a good time to tell you that I used to be a Shinigami," his father says dejectedly after a beat of silence. "And that I gave up being one to save your mother's life."

"Why did you-"

"Your mother let herself get injured by a strange Hollow that was close to killing me in order to kill it, and because your mother is a Quincy, the injury would have led to her death because Quincies don't have any natural protections against Hollows like Shinigami do, so I tethered my soul to hers in order to stop her soul destruction," his father explains, and now the pieces are starting to click into place for Ichigo.

"What would have happened to mom if the Auswählen had hit her instead of me?" Ichigo quietly asks, revealing the fact that he had overheard those conversations years ago, to which his father's expression becomes bitter.

"I would have immediately lost my powers to the Auswählen and probably would have died months later because the Auswählen creates a silver clot within the Quincy's body that will eventually kill them," comes his mother's voice from the doorway, and Ichigo's gaze darts in her direction to take in her form. She's blue in his new sight, with faint traces of Hollow black slowly swirling at the center of her being.