Long-ish author notes this time.
;p I can hear you groaning at the pun of the title. Don't blame me, it was the first thing that came to my head and nothing else didn't.
The timelines. Now, Bleach is set just after episode seven, "Greetings from a Stuffed Toy". Danny Phantom's timeline is set between "Reign Storm" and "Identity Crisis" .
XO Ugh. Ichigo seems very out of character to me - the second part anyway. Danny's fine (I hope). And I wanted Ichigo to freak out...
Translations of the Japanese words or just canon jargon for Bleach are at the bottom.
That done, enjoy the fic.
This story is discontinued. If you don't mind that, continue.
Crossing Over is Never Easy
By Dark Ice Dragon
Um, What?
Ichigo Kurosaki pivoted, dodged and brought up his zanpakutou to block the claws reaching for his head. Pushing them away with the help of his zanpakutou (sparks flying dangerously close to his face), he jumped - just as the Hollow's other hand smashed onto the spot where he had just been standing.
When he reached the top of his jump, Ichigo swung his zanpakutou with as much force as he could muster down on to where the Hollow's head was.
Except it wasn't there anymore.
"Ichigo!"
He had enough time to hear Rukia's warning and half turn while still in the air before he felt the Hollow's tail slam into his back.
He crashed onto the ground with the tail still on top of him making the landing even more painful. His free arm was bent at the elbow, caught between his body and the concrete ground. His sword arm was out in the open but the tail was pressing the hardest on his right shoulder making him unable to use his arm.
There was a low chuckle. "You're a shinigami? This fight was far too easy." The tail moved, crushing Ichigo further into the ground.
Ichigo grunted under the pressure. He gritted his teeth and the grip on his zanpakutou tightened. If he could just... The Hollow didn't seem to notice that Ichigo had shifted his own body slightly under the strain. Or it just didn't care.
"Heh. I haven't tasted a shinigami soul before and yours smells like it's going to be a feast!" He could hear the Hollow being on the verge of drooling. The Hollow twitched its tail in anticipation.
Ichigo pushed off the ground with a yell and with a sweep of his arm, cut the tail off from the rest of its body. He scrambled to his feet and held his zanpakutou out, ready to attack or defend.
The Hollow howled in pain and surprise. It gained its balance and then lashed at him with its hand once more.
Dodging it, Ichigo sliced at the arm. The Hollow was still quick enough to move out of the way but not enough to get away completely unscathed. It howled again.
Ichigo didn't wait for it to recover and attack. While it was distracted he swept his zanpakutou underneath and up towards the Hollow's head.
It didn't block or even try to.
Breathing heavily, Ichigo turned his back to it without waiting to see what would happen next. He'd been doing this for a while now so it wasn't anything new.
He looked to the spot where he had last seen Rukia and frowned slightly when he saw that she hadn't left it. Jeez, he was doing her job; couldn't she be a bit concerned for him as a person, and not just someone to carry out her orders for her?
The frown deepened when he saw her wide-eyed look. His eyes sliding away from her, wondering what it was that had unsettled her, Ichigo noticed a particular difference in the scene from what it was normally like. He stiffened out of habit, waiting for another attack if one were to come.
'Why is there a green light? The body should have disappeared by now.'
Before the thought fully processed, something neon green wrapped itself around his waist and yanked him backwards. He didn't have enough time to even blink before his feet left the ground.
The last thing he saw was Rukia running towards him before his vision turned green.
:-:-:"Wha-?" Ichigo's eyes snapped open. He could see a steel ceiling above him and the smell that was in the room was something that he was unaccustomed to. His hand reached up past his head and clutched the hilt of his zanpakutou. At least he wasn't completely defenceless. So where was he? Easing himself up slowly (a little hard with the sheath on his back but he could still manage it), Ichigo took stock of where he was.
He didn't have a clue.
Looking around at the objects in the room (laboratory? It looked like one), Ichigo knew that he had never been there before. It didn't look remotely like anything that he'd seen apart from a more refined laboratory from the ones in school. There were multiple tables with beakers filled with various luminous liquids dotted around the room. As well as that, there were bits and pieces of unfinished machinery sprawled all over the place. They covered the floor, some of the tables and took up all the spaces on most of the shelves. Ichigo noticed that there was a staircase leading out of the room in the far corner. He'd head for that as soon as he remembered how he had gotten here.
What was the last thing that he'd done? He remembered being in his room with Rukia after dinner when she had gotten a call saying there was a Hollow loose in the city. (Big surprise.) They had climbed out of his window and tracked it down to the river bank. Ichigo had fought it and won. And then...
He had found himself here. With no idea how he had got 'here' or how he was going to get back home.
But what was that glow? Ichigo tilted his head backwards to look behind him. That green swirling... whatever-it-was probably had something to do with how he had gotten to this place.
Finally standing up, instead of propping himself up on his elbows, he walked slowly towards the green light. It was the last thing he saw so if he maybe-
"Oh. Hey."
Ichigo whirled around to look at the person who had surprised him. There was no-one there. Which meant...
"Up here."
He slowly raised his eyes up to the ceiling. What he saw was a boy's head with messy white hair and bright green eyes sticking out the ceiling. Nothing strange about that. Ichigo had just never really seen a ghost that walked through walls; only floating a few feet off of the ground, if that. But then again, he wasn't always on the look-out for ghosts so he had probably just missed those ones.
"What, no speech? Not declarations of what you're going to do? Not even your name?" The ghost drifted completely through the ceiling and hovered slightly above Ichigo's head. The rest of the ghost's body was clothed in black skin-tight clothing that ended in white skin-tight gloves. There was a white emblem on the ghost's chest but Ichigo didn't recognise it. The ghost crossed his arms expectantly.
Ichigo's response to that was to merely give the ghost a look. Why would he want to do that? Hollows weren't usually -usually being the key word- big on speeches and why would he waste time telling a Hollow what he was going to do when it could use that time to create more damage? Or eat souls?
Telling a ghost, on the other hand, was different. If he told a ghost what he was going to do, they'd go into a panic and run away and then he'd have to chase after them before using konsou on them. He'd seen how the ghost in his room had reacted when Rukia had used konsou on him. And that was when he didn't know what she was doing. Of course, when she said that she was a shinigami, that probably didn't help.
The ghost blinked and relaxed his arms a little. "No? So, you wouldn't mind just going back to the Ghost Zone, without a fight?" There was a hopeful tone in the boy's voice.
"The Ghost Zone?" Ichigo repeated, a little confused. "I've never heard of that place before." Maybe it was another name for Soul Society? But how did the spirit know about the other name? Maybe that was what they called it here.
Another blink. "Uhh, you just came from there." The ghost pointed towards the green whatever-it-was behind Ichigo.
"I didn't come from a Ghost Zone," Ichigo stated flatly. Apart from the fact that the last thing he had seen was green. Maybe he'd travelled through it?
The ghost rolled his eyes. "Riiight. That's why you're standing here, outside the Fenton Portal, in clothing that obviously isn't from this century and my ghost sense went off when you came out of the portal. You're telling me, you're not a ghost." The sarcasm rolled off the ghost's tongue easily.
Ichigo thought the last part over. He was a shinigami but he was technically a ghost since he had to leave his body every time he needed to use his powers. He'd never really thought about it that way. He realised another thing that he'd heard the spirit say.
"Your ghost sense?" Ichigo repeated uncertainly. "Whatever it does, shouldn't it go off all the time since you're a ghost as well?" he asked.
The ghost suddenly looked uneasy. "Only other ghosts."
Which, kind of made sense. "And you detected me?"
A nod. The ghost jerked as if he had realised something. "Aw man, the time. Could you just go back to the Ghost Zone? I don't have time for this!"
Ichigo's head tilted slightly to the side. "You have somewhere to go?" Ghosts didn't have to worry about time. They only had to wait until a shinigami came and sent them to Soul Society. And the place that they normally waited was usually the place that the person had died. Or, if they knew that there was someone in the vicinity that could see them and could maybe help them with something, Ichigo's mind added.
"Yeah. School."
Ichigo couldn't help it - both his eyebrows rose in surprise. School? Ichigo thought that the ghost knew he was dead. After all, the boy had floated through the ceiling/floor. Unless that was the place he was haunting. Ichigo opened his mouth to comment when a voice drifted down the stairs from the corner of the room.
"Danny!" The sound of stairs protesting slightly.
"Oh no." The ghost's (Danny's?) eyes widened and he flew up through the ceiling.
Clang.
Ichigo looked over his shoulder already knowing what he was going to see. Okay, he wasn't expecting the door to be striped black and yellow but there was still a barrier there.
He walked up to it and touched the door. A flash of green. And not doing that again, one part of his mind commented dryly as the other part cursed profusely. If he touched it and it felt like his hand had just been shocked, he wasn't going to go near it. But how was he going to get through it? Was he going to have to wait until the next time it opened? And when would that be? And how would he know when that was? Too many questions and no answers.
So, he was trapped here (wherever here was) with no way of getting back. Why wasn't he freaking out? Was he that used to things like this popping up out of nowhere that it no longer phased him?
"I'm sure I heard Danny," he heard someone mumble. He turned his head to look over his shoulder again and saw a red-haired girl. Her eyes wandered over the counters as if expecting Danny to pop out of nowhere. Which, Ichigo supposed, if he was thinking of the right person, Danny could actually do that. But if that was the case, why couldn't she see him? The ghost had left as if he knew that the girl could see him.
The girl rubbed her chin a little bit, a puzzled frown on her face. She shrugged and started to walk back up the stairs.
The sound of someone running down stairs from the floor above. "Bye mom, dad! Late for school!" The slamming of a door.
"He's late for-?" The girl checked the clock on the wall. "I'm late for school!" She ran up the stairs.
Which left Ichigo Kurosaki trapped somewhere where he didn't know where he was without a body.
'Well,' he thought to himself, 'if I have to travel to get home, at least I don't have to worry about money.'
He headed up the stairs to figure out where he was and how he was going to get home.
Hollow: The name of bad spirits that are no longer human and eat souls of the dead and living alike.
Konsou: Soul burial. When the soul is sent to Soul Society.
Shinigami: Translated as "Death God" or literally as "God of Death".
Soul Society: Heaven
Zanpukutou: The sword that shinigami use to purify Hollows and send Plus spirits (good ghosts) to Soul Society.
Any good? I still think he's out of character. Any suggestions on how to get him back in character?
If you spot any problems, spelling mistakes, please tell me. I won't bite.
Last one. The next update will be on the third of January. I'll be updating every two weeks until I've run out of chapters that have been pre-writen. Once/If I run out of said pre-writen chapters after a certain time, well, I'm a slow updater. And by that time, I'll be back in uni so I won't have as much time to write. (shrugs) Just the way it goes.