Well, I'm assuming that JCA is set in 2000 while Bleach is set in 2001 since that was when it started. No timeline for JCA.

Um, Ichigo's using americanisms because it's technically closer? And I actually can't remember if he can touch spirits. (Rukia doesn't count because she's a Shinigami. Says me.) (worries over the tiny facts that were researched.) Is the underworld right?

Thanks to this, I've got the plotbunny of a Shaman King/Bleach crossover.

A Normal Day

By Dark Ice Dragon

Disturbance

A fourteen-year-old Ichigo Kurosaki walked along the sidewalk, absentmindedly licking at the melting ice-cream cone in his hand. The rest of his family were still at the ice-cream parlor finishing off their own ice-creams. He had opted to walk around San Fransisco by himself - the sites that he found interesting, he could show it to them for a better look later.

Ichigo stopped walking, his ice-cream completely forgotten about, as he felt a presence quickly approaching him from in front of him.

He knew that he couldn't react to it -how could he when he was surrounded by other people?- but why (and how) did the spirits always come to him when they needed help?

He'd barely been in the city for a day and the local spirits already, somehow, knew that he could see and help them. Was there something about him that told spirits around him 'Hey! I can see you! I can help you!'?

"Aaah!" a young voice yelled. Ichigo forced himself to not show any outside indication that he had heard anything out of the ordinary. None of the people around him so much as blinked, telling Ichigo that it was a spirit who was shouting. There was also that slight echo in the tone of the voice that hinted that the speaker wasn't alive.

"Why does this keep on happening to me?" the voice continued to wail.

There. Almost directly in front of him. A young girl (slightly younger than him) emerged from a body of a man, running as fast as she could.

Even though she was translucent, Ichigo would still see the black hair and defining Chinese features. She didn't seem to be slowing down or even trying to stop though.

He braced himself for an impact - she ran straight through him. Ichigo didn't have time to feel stupid because he had to supress the shiver that was running up his spine. When the girl had ran through him, he suddenly had a disjointed feeling from his body. It was as if his soul was ready to leave his body.

Did that mean that if a spirit kept in contact with him for a long time, the spirit could kick his soul out of his body and possess it?

Ichigo shook his head. Nah. He'd had 'physical' contact with spirits before and all he had felt was chilly, condensed air instead of flesh.

The girl sounded like she was in trouble, his mind reminded him, distracting him from what he had felt. But there was nothing after her -he couldn't sense anything- and, as far as Ichigo knew, nothing chased after spirits anyway.

Ichigo's mind, for some reason, showed him of the girl by the river.

When the spirits had gone to him for help, it was usually because something had happened to the place that they had died, their graves or they thought that he could help them to 'pass on'.

He shook his head again. Nothing could hurt spirits; all the spirits had to do was wait until they passed on to the next world. Tilting his head slightly, Ichigo thought about the last words the girl had yelled out. Maybe, there was a shinigami that took souls to the underworld. And that was who she was running from.

If that was the case, he didn't have to worry about the girl.

Fishing out a tissue he had taken from the ice-cream parlor, Ichigo cleaned up the ice-cream that had dribbled on to his hand. He then started to walk again.

The girl was fine and not in trouble.

It wasn't his job to send spirits to the next world.