Chapter 2: Making Contact

A/N: Holy crap, I wasn't expecting that much of a response on a 515 word teaser! Six reviews and nineteen follows? IN TWO DAYS? WHAT. Well, apparently I should continue the story then...

Also, for those of you curious about how power scaling is going to work, I have actually done a few calculations (yes, math, ew) to compare Hitsugaya with the rest of the BnHA universe - and yes, he will be rather OP, especially compared to Class 1-A (since they're kids). But don't worry too much, as I do have plans to both handicap Hitsugaya (ex. he's not supposed to directly interfere with human society because he's dead) and to power up certain BnHA characters ;)

Anyhow...first chapter! Plus Ultra!

Light filtered slowly in through the cracks of his eyelids, and he shifted vaguely, his head aching. He felt a hand cup his face, holding his cheekbone between silicone-covered palms, and suddenly there were fingers on his carotid, gently taking his pulse. He snapped to full awareness, mind whirring at breakneck pace, and with a flash of yawning emerald he was awake and looking up into the face of a concerned man wearing what had to be a Halloween costume…in March. In Tokyo. Shit. What had happened this time? He sat up, blinking the blood trickling from a gash on his forehead out of his left eye, quietly observing his surroundings. And then it hit him and he looked up at the man in the yellow and green superhero suit, stricken realization flooding his body with unnatural cold. The man was talking softly to him, the hands on his shoulders trying to push him gently onto his back, and a small crowd had gathered around just outside some unspoken perimeter.

The humans could see him.

"-easy now, you've got a nasty head injury," the man was saying, his voice soothing. "Could you please lay back down until the ambulance arrives? You fell from quite a height."

He remembered then. The flash of gravity and light and spinning color as he'd been pulled across dimensions, away from his Sixth Seat and her squadron of shinigami, their cries of 'Captain!' as he vanished in front of them. A sharp breath passed his lips, everything crystallizing in his mind. He leveled a cold stare at the man touching him, then snapped his body in a single fluid motion, shaking the stranger's hands off him. He could feel Hyourinmaru's sheathed blade resting securely against his broadening back, his haori rustling about his muscled calves, but despite these familiar things he could only focus on one thing.

Humans. Could see him. Which meant…shit.

He shot to his feet, the protesting cry of the superhero-like man in front of him summarily ignored, and turned towards the crowd, already breaking into a run. And then the man in the yellow and green suit reached out, his arms growing to unimaginable lengths like limp noodles. Without thinking, he recoiled, a cry of shock bursting from his mouth, and on instinct built from years of war, he pulsed his reiatsu. The Shunpo carried him at least a mile from the shopping center, and he landed neatly in a tree in a small park, crouching on one of the branches. Finally, he took a calming breath and properly observed his surroundings. Much to his surprise, he was still in Tokyo, but the signs plastered to every wall were of men, women and humanoid creatures dressed in elaborate costumes with advanced gadgetry designed for fighting.

Hitsugaya Toushiro, in that instant, felt the air driven from his lungs. If his suspicion was correct, then in this dimension humans could possess superpowers. And he'd just run from one of them.

Oh, this was brilliant. And people called him a child prodigy.

He sighed, folding his head into his hands. The callouses on his palms were rough against the smooth, soft skin of his face and the sharp angle of his jaw, and the contact was grounding. He knew for certain that he'd been yanked from Soul Society into a new dimension – he'd been through the Dangai enough times to know what interdimensional space felt like – but this was definitely not the World of the Living, and he needed to get back to his Division. Matsumoto couldn't be left in charge indefinitely, after all.

With a rasping whisper, he drew Hyourinmaru from the sheath and pressed the gleaming blade into empty air, calling silently for the Senkaimon. And much to his relief, it appeared. But the doors didn't open. He frowned, reaching out to touch the sliding shoji doors, and shivered at the unnaturally hollow emptiness emanating from the passage behind the locked gate. The Senkaimon quivered at his touch, reacting to his powerful reiatsu, and abruptly started to fade away. A low curse escaped him, and he sheathed Hyourinmaru again with a scowl.

He'd obviously been brought here by something. Or rather, he thought, glancing up at the posters and TV screens of heroes and heroines, by someone. So all he needed to do was find them again, and get them to send him back – all while dodging the heroes that would inevitably be on the lookout for the 'injured' teenager on the run after falling from 'quite a height.' Easier said than done. Heroes with their fancy powers appeared to be fairly common, judging by the posters scattered all over the city, but determining which among them had opened the dimensional portal and forced him through it…that would be much harder.

He took a soft breath and was gone again, Shunpoing to another part of the city, closer the mall he'd landed in. A frown twitched the corners of his mouth, the air sour between his lips, charged with some faint remnant of spiritual residue. It was unlike reishi or reiryoku, from what he could tell, but the buzz was undeniably present, and he could feel the reishi particles that made up his spiritual body protesting the slight interference. Hopefully this task wouldn't take too long. Reishi wasn't an easy thing to manipulate (as he knew through his Bankai) but if exposed to too much outside reiatsu for too long, it would react. His time in the Soul King's realm, where the air swam with power, and movement had been sluggish for the first minute or so, had already affected him, making him stronger and faster. It had been like the Soul King's realm had seeped into his body, steeping it in thick, dense power until he emitted that same aura effortlessly.

It was unlikely this foreign energy would have the same effect, but if he was exposed for too long, there was no telling what could happen.

Perched silently on top of a water tower, gazing out over the tangled throng of cars and people below, he gritted his teeth. Even from his high vantage point, he could see that some of the people in civilian clothes had inhuman features like those some of the heroes had. It was a sobering, horrifying realization to come to – that even a civilian, non-hero could have the power which had ripped him from his home. But he did have the one thing that none of the humans did, and that was time. Not as much as a normal shinigami, to be sure – Kurotsuchi's horrific treatments had shaved years, if not decades, off his lifespan – but at least ten times that of a normal human. He would find someone to send him back even if it took years.

Suddenly, one of the large TV screens on the side of a tall, glassy building shifted, a newswoman with curly horns on her head appearing onscreen with the yellow and green suited-man that had been trying to help him earlier. The man waved at the camera, a serious expression on his face, and continued speaking.

~"-a little under 170cm, if I had to guess, maybe about fourteen or fifteen years old. With a shock of bright white hair too, whiter than snow, and green eyes. He's got a nasty head wound, though, so I don't know how clearly he's thinking."~

Toushiro felt his blood run cold, eyes widening as he realized what was going on. The newswoman looked concerned.

~"Is this boy dangerous, Elasticity?"~ the horned woman asked, and Hitsugaya breathed a sigh of relief when the man shook his head.

~"It's a possibility – he was armed with a sword. However, he didn't like physical contact, and he panicked and used his Quirk upon seeing my own Quirk, which either suggests that he was disoriented enough to not understand what he was seeing and was scared enough to run, or was panicking upon seeing a hero."~ The superhero's face was still scrunched up in concern and confusion. ~"However, his Quirk is troublesome – he appeared to teleport away from the location where he was found. Running will be very easy for him, and I urge any citizen that comes across this boy to first contact authorities, and then if he is calm, to attempt to delay him from a distance. If anything, I urge citizens to keep their distance, both for this young man's safety and for theirs. He ran the moment I tried to catch hold of him again."~

~"Teleportation? That is a difficult Quirk,"~ the newscaster remarked. Elasticity nodded and smiled anxiously.

~"It is, and the boy appears frightened enough to repeatedly use it in public. If any information concerning his whereabouts is discovered, please relay it to the police."~

Toushiro cursed under his breath as the brief announcement faded into further discussion about the recent debut of a rookie heroine called Mt. Lady, then crouched further into the shadows of the water tower. He'd have to move in the shadows, then, if he didn't want his journey home to be delayed in any way. But that was something he could do.

For the next several days, he stayed out of sight, wandering the back alleys of this polished, newer Tokyo with silent footsteps. And he watched. Gradually, as the TVs kept up the constant stream of information, and as he watched the people moving briskly about their business below him, he gained a vague image of the new dimension he found himself in. Somehow, this dimension's timeline was more advanced than his own, and humanity had evolved to the point where many of them had gained superhuman abilities, or the Quirks that everyone seemed so fond of jabbering on about. Furthermore, he couldn't sense any Hollows – which was probably a good thing, considering that there were no alternate-universe shinigami either. However, the buzzing somehow-spiritual nuisance didn't go away, and it was slowly starting to make his skin itch.

But there was one problem. He hadn't eaten since the day before he'd arrived in this new dimension, and the distinct, dizzy weakness of hunger was beginning to set in. His Shunpo distances were already shortening, his energy starting to run dangerously low. And he hadn't slept much either, further complicating the matter. But when he saw the massive stadium onscreen, packed to the brim with cheering people, he had a brainwave. With that many over-evolved humans in one place, he was bound to find at least one with the ability to send him home. Or so he hoped.

So he set off at a run, intermixing short bursts of Shunpo into his pace to cover more ground in less time, and breathed, the dense knot of human reiatsu on the other side of the massive city calling to his senses.

It took him a grand total of forty minutes to traverse the distance, and by the time he arrived outside the massive grounds of what appeared to be a high school, he was gasping for breath, his heart pounding in his chest, and he dry heaved in the relative safety of a nearby alleyway. His limbs trembled slightly, and for the first time he realized that he was probably reaching the point of malnutrition. A week without food would definitely do that. For a brief moment, he compared the faint quivering to the agonizing scrape against his insides that being zombified had felt like, then with a sharp intake of air, he blinked the thought from his mind. He could already tell that his reaction time was worryingly low compared to what it had been.

Shakily, he stood up, glancing across the street at the high walls and secured stadium of where the high-school Quirk tournament was taking place. The incessant screaming was clearly audible even from his sheltered spot between two concrete obelisks. With a sigh, he took a step forward, Shunpoing easily over the wall, and landed in a clump of grass on the other side. Then he slipped off to find a spot from which he could more easily observe the Quirks. All he had to do was find the one that could send him back. That was it.

But it seemed fate would have other plans. For just as he ghosted around to the side of the stadium, preparing to scale the gigantic metal structure, a woman dressed in a bodysuit popped out of nowhere, a lanyard reading 'SECURITY' looped around her neck. He blinked once at her, then startled, realizing even before she started moving that she was one of the heroes hunting him. Her blonde hair bounced as she closed the gap, narrowing his ground-level avenues of escape. Then she shifted to her left, allowing a man with a wooden-pattern covering his face to cover his right path. But they both kept their distance.

"Stay still, kiddo," the woman commanded, but her voice was low and soothing, like she was talking to an injured animal. "We don't want to hurt you, or scare you, okay?"

Don't worry, Captain, this won't hurt a bit! Now drink up! And then there was the taste of blood – not his own – on his tongue.

He jerked back at the similarity in their voices and words, then willed his erratically racing heart to slow, pressing his back against the metal framework of the massive stadium. The woman stopped when he yanked himself away, carefully raising her hands, palms up, to show that she wasn't carrying anything. On the side, the man with the wooden costume mirrored her movements. Both were trying to appear very gentle, that much he could tell, and the dried blood smeared on his face probably wasn't helping matters.

"Kiddo, could you come here, please?" the woman asked again, obviously trying to appear non-threatening.

You can come out, Captain!

He had to fight back the surge of bile that rose up his throat at the unwanted memory of Giselle's voice, but even as the blonde woman settled just a little more forward, he could feel indecision flickering at his mind. He hadn't had much success searching for the necessary Quirk on his own for the past six days, and he was feeling faint from hunger and lack of sufficient sleep. Perhaps he would have a more success looking from the inside of this unusual society, and at the very least he could get a few stitches for the little gash above his eyebrow. Slowly, he nodded and as he took a step away from the stadium wall she smiled encouragingly.

But then he felt it. The prickling, heavy weight of evil pressing in on his soul, and he whirled around in shock, eyes widening, and shot up to the roof of the stadium in a neat Shunpo. The woman's cry of protest was lost on the wind, and he watched in horror as the commentators slowly noticed the warping of spacetime above the rectangular slab of concrete on which two teenage boys stood. Suddenly, the woman in blue and orange and off-white grew impossibly large behind him, the wooden man riding on her shoulder with lashes of wood ready to capture. But they both paused at the sight of the rip in the sky, even as Hitsugaya had.

The young shinigami swallowed hard as the Garganta struggled to form properly, praying against all hope that the doorway to Hueco Mundo wouldn't open. But then the sky tore and a howling mask roared through the portal. Toushiro felt his heart drop.

Adjuchas.

The Hollow let loose another earth-shattering cry even as the commentators shouted warnings to the civilians in the stands, its long fangs and claws gashing the concrete like the rock was paper. And then it chuckled, turning hungry eyes on the two stunned teenagers in the arena, and lunged for them, cackling madly the entire time, its thirty-foot girth towering over the two boys.

And Hitsugaya moved, throwing himself forward without even a second's thought to tackle both the blonde teenager and his dichromatic-haired counterpart entirely out of the massive Hollow's path. Hot pain flared along his thigh, but he gritted his teeth and ignored the pain of fresh blood, rolling with the teens as they hit the ground forty yards away from the concrete platform. The boy with white and red hair coughed, winded, and but his blonde friend shot upright, growling with faintly sweet-scented nitroglycerin sparking on his palms. The boy's red eyes flickered down to the deep gash in his savior's leg.

"The fuck are you-"

Hitsugaya didn't have time. The Adjuchas was already moving, the distinct white splash of his haori obviously recognized as a powerful threat.

"Bakudo no ichi, Sai!"

The Kido spell did its work, wrenching the blonde's arms behind his back and sending him falling flat on his face, safely out of harm's way with the heterochromatic kid sitting up beside him.

Toushiro shot forward again, rushing the Adjuchas head on. And then Hyourinmaru's hilt made contact with his palm, the blade sending cold fire through his heart and soul. The pain from his rent thigh numbed instantly, cold reiatsu overflowing from his soul, and the Adjuchas focused all of its attention on the young captain. A gleeful smile split its bony mask, and with a high-pitched whistle its claws were lashing out. Hitsugaya front-flipped effortlessly over the attempt at decapitating him, drawing his blade at the same time.

The green glare of his cold gaze burned with vindictive anger.

"Stupid Hollow." He muttered, and Shunpoed, Hyourinmaru's silver blade flashing white and red.

He landed neatly on the concrete, waraji scuffing the cracked surface, Hyourinmaru's icy hilt held in a perfect reverse slash, then relaxed and sheathed the blade with an expert flick of his wrist. The Adjuchas stiffened behind him. And then it split straight down the center, the severed halves of its massive carcass disintegrating into reishi before it even hit the ground. Toushiro let a huge breath of air escape him, then turned back to face the pair he'd rescued. With a wordless gesture, he released the Kido spell, looking the two over carefully. They stared back, one blinking in confusion and the other in something like indignance, but were unharmed, and almost without realizing it the tension slid from his shoulders.

Heat seared his thigh then, reminding him of the bone-deep slice in his flesh, and a woman wearing a very suggestive costume appeared in front of him as his leg buckled. Her eyes were kind, though her face was serious, and as the guy with the wooden face popped up behind her, she reached up and ripped her outfit. Instantly, some kind of pink smoke hit his nose in a concentrated puff, and before Toushiro knew exactly what was happening, the concrete began to look strangely comfortable. He staggered, the sky rolling once, twice, and then gave in to the darkness tugging him under.

Well? How was the first real chapter? Leave a review to let me know! ;)

~avtorSola