A/N: Fun fact: In order to account for Naruto's "dattebayo" and also make Naruto's speech less awkward, excess words like "ya see," "ya know," "I mean," "believe me," etc. are placeholders. I could've used "believe it" but... no. Just no.

Another fun fact: I love Minato's jutsu naming sense.

KEEP YOUR PROMISES

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I grabbed the chain with one hand, planted my feet firmly on the ground, and pulled. Unexpectedly, the chain had almost no resistance; it was like poking a hole through a wet piece of paper. It took barely a second for the link to come free in my hand. I say unexpectedly, but you know that wasn't the unexpected part. The unexpected part came next.

An inhuman screech, so loud it pierced the heavens, shattered the air. The ghost arched his back and turned his twisted face skyward. Blindly, his eyes white with some unknown energy, he groped at the center of his chest, searching for something he couldn't find.

"Ghost-dude? Ghost-dude, what's happening?!"

Underneath the ghost, an empty blackness began seeping up, dragging the ghost into its depths. All the while, the screech went on. I started to get a bad feeling about this… Yes, only now.

Just as the screech petered out, a white light covered the ghost from head to toe, and the ghost exploded. There's no other word for it. I'd put up an arm to shield my face, and when I lowered it back down, I found that the ghost who so desperately wanted to find his wife was completely gone.

Did I just complete a successful ghost-exorcising-jutsu?! I threw my fist into the air! Hmm, what should I call it? The Ultimate-Wind-Slasher-Power-Eradication-Mystical-Spirit-Bending-Pull-no-jutsu? No, no, that was something Dad would use…

An invisible force slammed into my chest with the power of Bushy-Brows' punches. It was suddenly hard to breathe, like the sensation I got after running away from the hospital. As I suspected it must've had something to do with my new ghost pow—

A hand slammed me into the ground, breaking the concrete. Little pieces of rock flew away like shrapnel. I coughed, so I reached up a hand and wiped away the blood. I tried to stand up before I was blitzed again. On one knee, I could just make out a lumbering form in the thick smoke before the hand came back and smashed me through a building into someone's residential quarters.

Picking myself up and mentally counting the broken ribs, I came face to face with a little boy. The kid blinked once. I blinked in response. The kid turned to the door that supposedly led to the rest of the house and yelled, "MOM! The ninjas broke in again!"

I slapped a hand over his mouth before he could say anything more. "Quiet!" I hissed. I scanned the opening in the wall. The smoke finally cleared, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just my indentation. "Listen, kid, run to your mom and don't come outside, okay?" The boy looked a little wide-eyed. "Okay?" I insisted. He nodded.

I shoved him toward the door at the same time a giant "hand" swooped through the hole in the wall and wrapped his talons around the child. The boy cried out, "What's happening?!" I dashed over to the hand and attempted to keep the "fingers" from enclosing the boy and squishing him to death. But the power of this— this monster was unbelievable! My veins were bulging in my arms, my face turning red. Through clenched teeth, I barked, "Run!"

"From what?!" The boy sobbed, helplessly looking around for something he couldn't see.

Ichigo's voice repeated in my mind: Because you're the only person in this city who can see ghosts.

The only one.

I roared and threw my back at the talons of the monster. I used my left hand to grab the kid by the front of his shirt and threw him as far away as possible in the same room. As soon as the boy was free, I dropped to the ground. The fingers of the monster came together with a harsh snap. The creature screeched with displeasure. (Why was that screech familiar? No time to think!)

The monster took its arm and extracted it out of the house by knocking down the entire side of the building. I shielded the kid from debris with my own body. As soon as the last crash ended, I threw myself into a standing position and got a clear view of the monster.

It stood about twenty feet tall and was completely covered in some type of white bone, all except for a gaping hole in the middle of its chest. Whoa boy, we got a live one here, I thought. (What irony.) It was vaguely humanoid with forearms as long as it's body. The monster turned it's insectoid head to me and screeched once more, revealing a double layer of teeth and a forked tongue. The creature's hot breath blew my hair back, smelling like… absolutely nothing.

Then its entire body shot forward and I couldn't dodge. The boy was right behind me. Time felt exceptionally slow. Suddenly, like how everything seems to come to me, the familiar screech, the scentless breath, the boy's blindness, it all came together into a horrible picture. Like Ichigo's drawings. Only it was too late.

My hands flew up into the Clone Seal with the slowness of walking underwater; my call to Kurama was a barely articulated cry— Shit, I have to at least save the child—

If I was any less of a ninja than I am, I wouldn't've been able to see it. But since I fought people like Sasuke on a daily basis, I was used to fast. Hell, nobody could compete with me in Tailed-Beast-Mode, I was fast.

But this was something different. I caught the sight of a blur coming in from the east. I'd catch sight of it for a bare millisecond before it'd suddenly jump forward, like a security camera that took pictures every few seconds. The image would jump forward without any transition that I could see, a movie frame by frame. I noticed this all in the back of my mind as the monster's head continued to encroach on my personal space. (Nice talk for: eat me.)

I was never one to close my eyes to death. Wasn't my style, ya know.

So I saw the exact moment Ichigo planted his hand on the creature's second layer of teeth and shattered the monster's entire bone structure by simply standing still. Of course, that did nothing against the momentum of a ten ton monster barreling across someone's living room and the entire weight slammed into my wayward roommate. Bits of the creature's mask flew in all directions. The creature's body hit Ichigo and skidded out to the left, crashing into the wall leading to the rest of the house.

The broken face of the monster screeched, this time in anger. It picked itself up from the debris, one golden eye glaring murderously, the other oozing white stuff. It looked like liquified bone. My eyes flashed over to Ichigo in worry— nobody could take a hit like that— but he was already in motion. He had one of those huge-ass swords he lugged around in one hand, the longer of the two, and was darting forward in that same way as before, one second right in front of me, the next halfway across the room.

He brought the sword up over his head and jumped at the monster, bringing the sword down as he fell. The creature hissed and rolled out of the way, back outside. Ichigo's sword came down with a slash that cleaved the floor in two.

Instead of following it outside, Ichigo practically collapsed. He barely stood up by leaning on his sword, and that heavy breathing couldn't be good!

I spared a warning glance at the kid, "Don't move!" And I pelted over to the guy. I had never noticed before, but there were heavy bags under his eyes, like he hadn't slept in a while. Or maybe I had noticed but hadn't thought much of it. He was a ghost, after all. Ghosts shouldn't get tired. Ghosts shouldn't get hungry. Ghosts shouldn't have to fight monsters.

They were just supposed to haunt places and stuff.

"Hey!" I reached out a hand to steady Ichigo, but he angrily shook me off. I didn't try it again. "Hey, what's wrong!?"

"I'm almost out of reiatsu." He sounded frustrated with himself.

I didn't know what reiatsu was. Ghost chakra? "That monster's gonna come back in and slaughter us!" I yelled. "You're the only one who can fight it! You gotta get up!"

"Don't you think I know that?!" he growled at me, scowling fiercely. He forced himself to stand up, albeit unsteadily. With the grimmest face imaginable, he stalked outside. The guy looked like he would pass out, so I followed after him.

Outside, the monster was thrashing to and fro in pain, letting out intermittent squawks. And to my greatest surprise, it started to speak. In the ghost-dude's voice.

I guess I shoulda looked harder for his wife.

"Foolish shinigami! You think you can defeat me?! You will become the meat to fuel my hunger!"

Ichigo looked rather blase about the entire situation. I guess people try to eat him all the time. He moved his sword into a ready position. "As if you could take me, hollow!"

The… "hollow"… flew forward in a blatantly straight-forward attack at the same time Ichigo threw a five foot sword at my face. Ichigo ducked under the flying monster, his orange hair skimming the creature's talons, and flopped down on the other side.

Meanwhile, I had bigger problems to deal with, mainly catching the damn cleaver that was trying to stab me. Luckily, Ichigo had thrown it hilt first, else I probably wouldn't be telling this story. Taking the sword in two hands and having absolutely no idea what to do with it, I vaguely positioned the pointy end at the monster and gravity did all the work. The hollow's head landed right on the tip of Ichigo's sword. The bone-white substance of the monster started dissolving into tiny bits of white light, fading into the air.

Just for a moment, I thought I saw the regular civilian ghost that caused this whole mess.

"Ghost-dude, I'm sorry!"

The civilian smiled for the barest second. Then he was gone.

I dropped Ichigo's sword and it sunk a foot in the ground. Damn, that sword was heavy! I basked in the after-battle silence. Broken plaster, wood, and rock were scattered all over the place. The residential home was practically ruined. Distantly, I could hear someone crying. It must've been that kid.

I shook myself when I realized a crowd would soon form around the area. I'll explain everything to Baachan later. I really didn't feel like dealing with her right now. No, I had someone worse to deal with.

Ichigo was passed out in-between a chunk of plaster and fractured bricks. Stepping on the bricks, I crouched at his side. "Let's go. Crowds will be forming. We should get out of here."

He mumbled something unintelligible.

"What was that?"

He turned his face to me. "I. Can't. Move." It totally pained him to say that. He was the sorta guy who'd sooner die than be helpless. I knew that 'cause I felt the same way sometimes.

"Well. I can't just leave you here. It'd be weird if people started stepping on invisible bodies, ya know."

Ichigo rolled his eyes.

"So." I felt my face widen into a mischievous grin. "I have no other choice." I grabbed Ichigo by the shoulders, hauled him up into a sitting position, then threw him onto my back. I tried to ignore that awful memory of Bushy-Brows-sensei giving Kakashi a piggy-back ride. I really did. That's a memory you try to suppress as much as possible.

"Oh, we are so not doing this," Ichigo growled.

"It's almost as bad from this end, believe me." Suppress memory, suppress memory…

I started the long trudge back to my apartment. After about three steps, Ichigo reminded me, "...don't forget my sword."

"Oh no, I am not carrying that thing. It weighs more than you do!"

"Well, we can't leave him here!"

"I'm not carrying it!"

"Then I will!"

I blew up, "That's the same thing as me carrying it!"

After some squabbling that basically surmounted to: "Carry it!" "No!" "Carry it!" "No!" (I totally should've won that argument, by the way.) Ichigo won out. In the end, someone tripping over an invisible sword is almost as bad as someone tripping over an invisible body. My own reasoning was used against me. Damn.

Once again, with twice the weight on my back from Ichigo and his two fricking swords, I started walking back home. I must've looked weird to any passerby, since they couldn't see Ichigo. I was thankful for that. You don't give piggy-back rides to grown men. You just don't.

My stomach growled. "Yo, Ichigo! What happened to that food you promised me?!"

"Eh, let's just order take-out."

I felt my eye twitch. I formed my words very carefully. "You weren't going to cook anything in the first place, were you?"

His silence was enough of an answer.

"... You bastard."

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