PROLOGUE

Kurosaki Ichigo. 5'9", 134 lbs, bright orange hair. Ichigo wasn't your everyday fifteen year old teenager. No, he was much more than that. Ichigo was a genius. With an unconfirmed IQ of over 200, he could easily have graduated from high school. Heck, he could easily have graduated from college, and graduate school, and gotten a job in almost any field he pleased. But instead, he chose to keep his blazing intellect a secret from everyone, preferring to attend the local high school, Karakura High, where he maintained the grades one would expect from a typical average high school student. Not even his closest friends suspected that Ichigo was anything other than a normal high school student.

Another thing that set Ichigo apart from his classmates: he could see ghosts. This was a secret that wasn't as well-kept as his genius. Not only his father, Kurosaki Isshin, and his younger twin sisters Yuzu and Karin, but also his closest friends Arisawa Tatsuki, Yasutora Sado (aka Chad), and Inoue Orihime knew of this unexplainable ability to see the deceased. After a while, his friends and family accepted the strange, sometimes awkward conversations Ichigo had with (to them) unseen spirits at the breakfast table and on the road to school.

Ichigo often wondered why he kept his abilities so secret. Then he would look up from the dinner table at the gigantic poster on the wall of the dining room. His mother, Kurosaki Masaki, smiled down at him from her place on the wall, with the words MASAKI FOREVER blazing across her face. She had died when Ichigo was nine, and from that day on Ichigo's life lost any sense of normality. At school, he would receive looks of pity and sympathy from his classmates, and he grew distant from the friends that he once laughed with. He lost the bright smile he once had as a child, a near-permanent scowl etching itself onto his face. Not even a month after his mother's death, his massive intellect surfaced. He made the decision then to keep it a secret, wanting his life to remain as normal as possible despite being the only nine year old at school without a mother. Instead, he would wake up, have breakfast, and walk to school to continue his "normal" life as a child, and later as a teenager.

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The sun shone down on Karakura Town, where a shock of bright orange hair could be seen exiting the Kurosaki Clinic and making his way to Karakura High. Schoolbag slung over his shoulder, Ichigo walked casually down the road. Turning a corner, a knocked-over glass bottle with a few flowers inside caught the corner of his eye. Usual scowl deepening, he turned to the trio of thugs who were swaggering away, shoving each other and laughing and spoke.

"Wait."

The single word, completely devoid of any emotion, had a profound effect on the thugs, who froze. Slowly they spun on their heels and faced Ichigo.

"Who the hell are you?" the middle thug, clearly the leader of the trio, drawled, an arrogant grin painted on his face.

"Who am I doesn't matter. What does matter is this," Ichigo said, pointing to the bottle and flowers lying on the ground. "Tell me, what is this?"

"They're flowers set out for the kid who died here recently," said the thug on the left.

"Ding ding ding! Correct!" Before the thugs could blink at Ichigo's sudden change in words, their leader was suddenly laid flat on the ground, Ichigo's foot pressed to his chest and his shocking orange hair mere inches from his face. Had the thugs cared to watch Ichigo's movements closely, they would have seen him drop into a crouch and lunge at the middle thug, closing the distance between Ichigo and the group in a blink of an eye. Upon reaching the group, Ichigo spun on his heel, crashing his other foot into the leader's solar plexus.

Crouching down, he yanked on the hair of the gasping thug, forcing his head up. "Listen to me," he growled, all trace of levity gone from his face. "You assholes are going to fix that bottle and apologize to the kid." Ichigo whirled, his foot still on the leader's chest, and turned the full force of his terrifying glare on the other two thugs, who were cringing at the sight of their fallen leader.

Flinching involuntarily at the scowl, they hurriedly turned to the fallen bottle, setting it back upright. Stepping back, they bowed deeply at it, chorusing in unison, "We are very sorry! Please forgive us!"

Satisfied, Ichigo lifted his foot from the first thugs chest and hissed at the trio, "Good. Now get out of my sight before I get even more pissed off at you. And believe me, you do NOT want to piss me off even more."

Nodding hurriedly, the two lackeys picked up their fallen boss and hobbled away, shouting back over their shoulders, "Thank you for your mercy, kind sir!"

As the trio vanished from view, Ichigo sighed and turned to the young spirit who had been standing beside him during the entire scene. "Sorry about that, I don't usually lose my temper. Just, seeing them knock over your flowers and laughing about it pissed me off."

"Thanks for helping me, nii-san," the young spirit said, looking up at Ichigo admiringly.

"No problem," said Ichigo, blushing a bit in embarrassment, his scowl softening slightly, although not quite enough to be noticed. "Now you hurry and pass on, alright?"

The spirit nodded, fading away from view. Ichigo sighed, ran his fingers through his orange hair, and continued his walk to school. Little did he know that today his life would change forever.

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Hi everyone! My names is fokker333 (you can just call me fokker) and this is my first story on this website! I've been reading fics on this site for a while now, especially Bleach fics, but I've never posted a story yet. However, recently this plot ingrained itself in my brain and I just couldn't leave it unwritten. Basically, it's going to be slightly AU in that Ichigo is a genius, as you would know if you've read what I have so far, and his intellect is going to change the way the original Bleach plot goes. I will more or less stick to canon, so major events such as the Invasion of Soul Society, the arrancar arc, etc. will still happen. HOWEVER: due to Ichigo's genius and subsequent slightly-different-from-canon reactions to some events, the plot WILL change. In addition to these changes, this fic will probably eventually contain IchiRuki, since it's my favorite pairing.

I apologize if this first chapter seems really boring, I'm aware that apart from the first few paragraph's I pretty much just wrote out the first bit of the original anime/manga. I promise that in the future it will be much more different. This chapter is more of a prologue to set the scene. Exposition, if you will.

So, please review, tell me what you think of this idea so far! Unfortunately, due to upcoming final exams, I probably will not update until later next week. However, I will try to stick to a regular update schedule of maybe a chapter or two a week. For now, you can probably expect a new chapter sometime later next week. Again, please leave a review. Any criticisms will be taken into account, but flames will be ignored. Thank you for reading!

~fokker333