In one of the hallways in the Avengers tower, and suddeny Steve was there, hovering, but probably not trying for threatening. Ichigo felt a little intimidated anyway, especially considering he had a pretty clear idea what this was about. He really didn't expect the tall man to be quite so straight-to-business, though. Or maybe he had, who cared.

"How did you do it?" Steve demanded, seemingly holding himself back from grasping the teen's collar. This was not doing anything for Ichigo's ability to concentrate.

"... Uh, do what?" he countered, trying to buy time to get his head back in gear from the unexpected situation. Steve frowned.

"The other day. When you just collapsed in stead of explaining how the hell you survived the Hulk smashing you into a wall. I saw you, you know, astral projecting or whatever through the window, and then fighting those God-awful nightmare monsters, though to be fair I didn't really se a lot of you in all that, just an awful lot of sparks and flashes. So what I'm getting at here is essentially, how? Because everything I know tells me that what I saw is impossible, and no one else seemed to react, but you act like there's something, so here's to hoping I'm not loosing my mind here."

For a while, Ichigo just stood there, stunned. Then, as his mind finally kicked into gear, he considered lying. He knew it was what he should do, at least according to shinigami code. However, he also knew – from experience – that the memory modifier wouldn't work properly on someone who could see him clearly, to say nothing of the fact that Steve had apparently been able to at least slightly track his movement. That complicated matters considerably. Also, he just plain didn't like lying, which ended up being the deciding factor.

"Uh, I... What is an 'astral project', exactly?" he asked, genuinely wondering. It had tripped him up a little, and, well... Anything to divert attention and avoid explaining. Not telling direct lies and not telling these people everything he knew was two different things, and he had no scrouples using some of the things Urahara had taught him about subterfuge, intentional or otherwise.

"It's, uh.. when your soul resides outside your body for a while, I guess? I've never actually seen it before, but it looked like how I've heard it described."

"Oo-kay? I, guess that's accurate, actually. My soul was outside my body that time. It's- I'd rather you didn't tell the others, though, I'm not really supposed to do that in front of people."

"Sure. I should probably tell you that Tony has this whole place covered in cameras, though, as well as microphones, so he, at least, probably knows already," Steve cautioned, looking a little guilty. Ichigo slowly nodded.

"Yeah, I should probably guess."

In a random chain of events, Ichigo ended up walking alongside Steve Rogers through the New York streets in the middle of the day, as opposed to their customary morning run/race routine. It was nice, he thought, being in a big city like this, without the absolutely enormous spiritual activity that he was used to back home. Now that he had gotten more used to the lower concentration, he actually found it quite relaxing. There was, however, an unsettling number of ghosts around. They werent attaching to him, though, thankfully, probably because he was a foreigner, he guessed, or possibly because they had better self preservation instincts than the local hollows.

"Uh.."

As Ichigo glanced over at him, Steve Rogers drew his breath as though to start anew.

"Is it just me, or are there people on this street that others can't see?" he asked, clearly a bit apprehensive of the answer.

Giving him a second glance, Ichigo weighed his options. On the one hand, the man was clearly able to see the ghosts, which was no real surprise when he had already shown that he could see hollows, which happened at a higher level of awareness than seeing ghosts usually did. On the other, teaching him anything about the spiritual world ventured far into territory that, strictly speaking, he wasn't even supposed to contemplate. Screw the rules, though.

"Uh, yeah... About that." One final glance, to judge reaction. "Those are ghosts. You can see them, I can see them. Most people cannot." He hoped that about covered it.

A startled, choked laugh quickly disabused Ichigo of that notion. Lookint over at the tall, blond man, he saw him quickly pull himself back together.

"You're kidding, right?" sounding like he hoped, more than knew, what the answer would be.

Frowning, Ichigo looked down for a bit.

"No, I am not. There are a lot more than I had expected, though. Like no one has had the time to send them on." The last sentence was said at such a low volume, it was clearly not meant to be heard, and was accompanied by a worried frown.

Steve, of course, heard it anyway, with his serum-enhanced hearing, and it left him in stunned silence, for a little while. Finally, he shook himself out of it, to confront this new, unexpected facet of reality.

"So you are saying, basically, that there are ghosts, that are real, and there are more than you expected. And I can see them." Listing all the facts, or presumed facts, helped him sort his thoughts and hopefully make some sense of it all. He wasn't hopefull, but it surely wouldn't work if he didn't at least try.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Ichigo looking sharply at him.

"That... Is a very good sum up of it, yeah. You believe it?" Asking was, of course, mostly to see how the man was coping with it. He couldn't really go much longer now without believing.

"I don't want to," was the answer, though it wasn't really one. "But, I suppose for now, the evidence is pretty clear in front of me." He frowned at one of the ghosts nearby. "What.. is that chain, though?"

With some surprise, Ichigo lifted his eyes towards him.

"That is the chain of fate," he explained, then continued; "it connects the soul to the body, as long as a human is alive. When someone dies, it is severed."

"Why are they different lenghts?"

"... Some of the difference is just individual, but it also is affected by how long the ghost has been dead. The chain... corrode, over time, it becomes shorter." At this point, Ichigo was starting to look a little uncomfortable.

"What happens when the chain reaches its end?" Steve asked, not quite willing to lett the subject go now they'd gotten started. He didn't get an immediate response.

Eventually, though, Ichigo pulled himself out of the quiet.

"... You remember the creature outside Stark's window? He asked eventually. At Steve's nod, he gave a short nod back before continuing. "They become that."

Again, Steve was stunned into silence. This time, though, he couldn't quite keep himself from staring openly at the teenager. Of all the things he hadn't expected to hear that day, that was by far the most... He didn't even know. Ghosts were real. He could deal with that. It was weird, sure, but it didn't really affect him, outside of the streets looking more crowded than they really were, and the occasional, odd experience of seeing two people apparently walking right through one another. These other... creatures, however, were a different matter entirely. Where the ghosts appeared to be entirely insubstantial, he had clearly seen one of those carve a deep groove into the side of an office building, and that meant they could do physical harm, be a threat to civilians giong about their daily lives in the city. That was absolutely not okay. And then to learn that those were essentially regular ghosts too? That average, normal people could turn into that kind of thing? He didn't quite know what to think of it all, but he was certain he didn't like it.

"... So you're saying that all of these ghosts could turn into that kind of monster?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Oh, uh.. Probably not," Ichigo answered, sounding slightly nonplussed. "Most of them will probably pass on by their own, and if they don't, there should be peopleto help with that..."

"People like you?"

"Not... Almost, I guess, but it is more like I am almost like them instead. It is a long, complicated and not very fun explanation that I would like to avoid, if I can."