fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

He was simply flailing too much for the question to have sunk in. He might answer it in a bit, when he stopped staring at Chad as if he'd grown another head or two. And as far as Ichigo was concerned, Urahara being in Japan was a good thing.

"But we were in school just yesterday," he pointed out, feeling a headache coming on. "We just went to Soul Society together, how can you have been here for a year?" He was a bit slow today.

"Two years," Chad corrected, patiently, holding up his fingers to indicate it. "Last year was just a visit. And I came here after we went to Soul Society, too," he continued, feeling glad that Ichigo was from about the same time relatively as he was, just...two years behind. "Just, you know, two years ago..."

And now he was starting to feel a little confused. Chat scratched his head a little.

"Um. It's weird? This place is like that."

Yeah, that might be the best Chad had to offer right now. He figured that was okay. Sometimes it just needed to...sink in. And Ichigo was smart, and it wasn't like Ichigo was not used to weird stuff happening. It'll sort out, right?

The annoying thing was that Chad wouldn't lie to him so he had to believe it.

"Okay, okay. I believe you," he said grudgingly, he wished he didn't have to. "Ah man, it still doesn't make any sense. Does that mean you left after me and just ended up here earlier? But then you'd be expecting me, here. No?"

Apparently he didn't want to settle for weird.

Chad shook his head a little. "No, you were still there when I left, and I didn't think you'd be coming here at all. I only came because it turns out my abuello had left me money to go to school in the States, that I could only use if I went to school in the States. But, the Chad where you come from probably didn't have that money, or decided not to use it, or..."

He scratched his head again. Why would the other him stay while this him left? Wasn't there something else where he thought about all this stuff before?

Oh. Right...

Chad grunted a little, not sure if mentioning that Shinigami captain that was here last summer would be helpful or detrimental to Ichigo's progress in this whole....accepting Fandom thing.

He was going to go with not helpful, and just kept his mouth shut on that point for now.

It was annoying when Chad didn't finish his sentences, but Ichigo didn't think he wanted to know all the posibilities anyway. It was better for his sanity.

"You never mentioned anything like that," Ichigo replied, not that that meant anything at all. It was Chad after all. He found himself staring at the weird cat again, trying to figure this out and his fingers absently played with the substitute shinigami badge. "My dad decided it'd be a good idea to come here."

Chad grunted a little at that. Not that Kurosaki-san would have known anything like that, but it didn't settle well to think that Ichigo would be sent to the otherside of the world if things were in the same state they were in when he left. Still, everything was fine for two years from when he left, so maybe....they would be the same for this Ichigo like the other Ichigo.

...Chad's head was starting to hurt, and he shook it a little, slowly.

"So you're here," he concluded. "...Once you get used to it, you'll like it."

"Yeah," Ichigo agreed, scratching the back of his neck again. "I'm here."

He was happy to just for a moment let the whole insanity lie beside him and concentrate on something normal. Well, sort of normal. "Is that a cat?" Cats weren't supposed to look like that.

"Yeah," Chad nodded. "That's Prince Oscar Pedro Neko-kun."

Pause.

"The Third. Neko-kun, this is Ichigo. He's a version of a friend of mine back home."

Prince Oscar Pedro tilted his head at Ichigo, and started to purr.

"Did you name him?" Ichigo wasn't sure what to make of the cat.

He leaned forward a little, studying it more closely. "It's just a cat right?" Yoruichi had never purred at him so...

Chad gave an affirmative grunt with his nod. After all, who else would have named him something like that. "It fits," he said. "And, yeah, far as I know, he's just a cat. I've had him for a while and he seems pretty normal."

Except, you know, the hairless thing, but Chad barely even noticed that anymore.

Normal was good and Ichigo reached out tentatively to pat the cat's head. Huh, that was softer than he expected.

"Okay so, if I get this right then anything Ino said about the whole possible future children and small animal invasions is true?"

Always happy to receive pettings, Prince Oscar Pedro's purring increased to a continuous motor hum.

"Aw, you've met Ino?" Because, yes, Chad, that was the important part of what Ichigo said. "She's one of my fake little sisters."

"The big sibling thing?" Ichigo glanced up at Chad for a second.

Okay, the cat was friendly. It was still ugly, though, but it couldn't help that. "I haven't met mine yet. Some guy named Jack Burton?"

"I'm not sure I know him," Chad admitted, a mite sadly because he sometimes felt bad not knowing people around here. Prince Oscar Pedro, meanwhile, nuzzled up into Ichigo's hand a little more, eagerly wanting more pets and perhaps even ear scritches. "But, yeah, the sibling program. She's actually the little sister of my little brother, but that makes her my little sister by connection. I've got a lot of 'em. Little siblings here."

Ichigo couldn't quite help but think of Shibata and it didn't surprise him at all to hear Chad was collecting little siblings. He was the right guy to protect them too.

He absently scratched Oscar Pedro's ear as the thought brought many others along with it. He didn't quite think this was the place to ask Chad about hollows however.

"I think I prefer being the big sibling myself," he said quietly. "So what's the school like? Beside weird?"

Yeah, that response didn't surprise Chad at all either. He grinned a little, remembering Ichigo's little sisters. More that he had them than what they looked like; he couldn't remember what they looked like and when he tried...

Chad grunted, the grin disappearing and the colour fading a bit from skin. Any attempts to picture Ichigo's sisters inevitably lead to images of a female version of Ichigo, which...was not pleasant. And were even more vivid with Ichigo standing right there.

"Good," he grunted weakly. "It's...good. Good school."

The grunt caught his attention and Ichigo stopped petting Oscar Pedro. It was probably a good thing he couldn't read Chad's mind. "Are you alright?"

At least now Chad knew that there was a possibility that if they all turned into girls again, he might have someone just as ugly as he was. He shuddered a little, and then tried his best to move on. "Yeah," he grunted. "Fine."

"You'll like it here once you're used to it," he added. "A lot different than Japanese schools, but I like it."

"I hope so. I hate to get stuck here and not like it," he glanced down at the cat again. "Ino said there aren't any uniforms. Did I mention that she's a ninja? One of her friends is an alien." His mind was still hurting just a little.

Chad rubbed the back of his neck again. "Uh, yeah," he said. "That stuff's really common around here, too."

He...decided he wouldn't mention that having an alien as a friend wasn't so odd at all when your boyfriend was an alien. He figured Ichigo was dealing with enough brain breakage than to have...that dropped on him. Especially when even the Ichigo from his timeline wasn't all that comfortable with it.

"It's the normal kids who are kind of the weird ones here..."

So pretending to be normal would make him weird. He just couldn't win on the whole blending in department.

Which left him to wonder. "Do they know about..." he motioned towards Chad's arm.

Chad grunted affirmatively with his small nod. "Not everyone," he said. "But there's no point in keeping a thing like that secret around here. For a while, I wasn't even sure if I could still do it, because you..."

Because he was in Japan, and he remembered being told that his own powers had manifested partially because of...

"I can, though. Strong as ever."

Ichigo could fill in the blanks and he frowned - more so. He couldn't imagine right now telling anyone new about being a shinigami. Not unless he had no choice.

And his curiosity won out as he finally did ask, "Have there been any hollows here?"

Chad shook his head. "No Hollows."

He hesitated, though, mulling over whether or not he should say more. "No real ones anyway, but...two years, no Hollows. At one point, last summer, there was a Shinigami captain here, though." He figured Ichigo should know that much if he was asking about Hollows. He just figured it wasn't necessary for Ichigo to know which captain. "So it's not...entirely possible that we aren't going to run into things from...our version of the world."

Ichigo himself being here was a good point in that case.

No hollows. His fingers closed around his badge and he felt something inside him drop. He didn't come here to escape his duties as a shinigami. It never occurred to him that there might be some place where there weren't any hollows.

What kind of world was this? He stared at the naked cat. No hollows meant he didn't have to fight. He wouldn't have to use his bankai and he wouldn't have to rely on that thing inside of him.

"I didn't know that," he said quietly. "You'd think there's hollows anywhere."

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