Bleach, Naruto 1. Chapter 1

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After a person dies there are two places their soul can go, Hueco Mundo where they will become a cannibalistic monster called a hollow or Soul Society the land of shinigami.

The two worlds are separate and opposites, their inhabitant's mortal enemies, or at least they were, as it's suppose to be.

Something …happened, many years ago before this mutated reitsu, called chakra I believe, manifested itself on earth.

This thing, this war, irrevocable intermingled the powers that should by law be separate.

Hollows with the lust for a soul snack yet the power of a shinigami were created for the army of a mad man. There were hundreds of them. They called themselves arrancar.

Then there were the shinigami, victims of twisted experiments of the same man, who had a hollow's mask forced upon them. Barely able to retain their own minds they fled persecution, and called themselves Viazards, the masked army.

There were eight of them originally.

Me, I am the one who led the massacre of Hueco Mundo that destroyed Las Noches and its twisted king. I led the masked ones to safety when Soul Society betrayed us. I was the last to lose myself to the insane mind of a hollow after hundreds of years in exile.

I am the ninth. I am the most powerful.

I was Kurosaki Ichigo.

But now I'm a monster.

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I twitch uncomfortably and try to shift my cramped limbs. The closed in walls prevent me, and I bang my head on a hard ceiling. Confused I open my eyes to see what looked like a dimly lit sewer, and the bars of a cage.

Where was I?

The last thing I remember was….

Oh. Yeah. Right. That.

I was sleeping; I generally try and keep myself asleep so that I don't harm anyone in my massively powerful hollow crazed state, when someone woke me up.

Generally not a good idea, because the last time I let myself munch on a soul was a few hundred years ago, and I was barely retaining myself from eating this nuance and ridding the world of an incredibly stupid idiot.

Unfortunately I did manage to exercise enough self-restraint for that feat. It's funny how my self-control led to my downfall.

The person, I never did see his face, had hollow bait. I should have high tailed it out of it right there. But I didn't. Still don't know why.

Anyway bait-man, who stupidly woke up an insanely powerful viazard and yet still looked like he owned the place, threw the hollow bait away somewhere, where it activated.

Let's recap why this is bad: one I'm barely hanging on to by instincts that are telling me to go on a soul feeding frenzy, two that hollow bait attracts hollows by smelling like a smorgus board of souls, and three I haven't eaten in like a hundred years.

By this point everything gains a red haze and the only thing I really remember is when one of the main courses, I mean ninja, somehow managed to summon a shinigami.

This was a rare thing as the shinigami permanently sealed themselves within Soul Society once the humans became spiritually aware enough to sense them. Hollows are a nonexistent problem with Shinji, the eighth, prowling around the white desert for anything that moves.

I remember laughing at the parody of a mask that he wore.

"Toushiro, you got big."

In a rare moment of sanity I was able to recognize those blue eyes and white hair.

"It's Hitsugaya-soutaichou, now… Kurosaki"

Good old Shiro-chan, he managed to keep the nobles in the council from hunting us down before we were strong enough to defend ourselves from them.

He drew his sword.

Then everything went dark.

And I awoke here.

In this tiny cell, in a sewer, with a giant TV screen on the wall.

Wait… giant TV? Cool!

Curious I watch what looks like a baby's perspective in a crib. It was really boring.

Just as I was trying to find the remote to change the channel, a man wielding a knife leaned threateningly over the crib.

The baby started crying and the sewer around me fell into turmoil as the water grew deeper and the walls gained a twist of vertigo that made me want to puke.

Desperately I tried to hold myself steady with my reitsu, but if anything that made things worse because something on the bars of my cage flashed and I was now paralyzed.

Finally the squalling infant was saved by an animal masked person.

Oh the irony.

I carefully tested my limbs, and found I was able to move again.

Settling into a semi-comfortable squat I put two and three together to form a conclusion.

This was the baby's inner world, as I was in danger of being drowned when it started crying. I will assume I was put here by Toushiro-chan when that frog riding human summoned him. I'm stuck in a very small cage. And let us not forget that there are assassins after said baby.

What?

That doesn't explain anything!

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this just hit me.

If I can get ten reviews I'll even update it!


	2. Chapter 2

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_Six masked figures stood in a circle surrounding the seventh._

_The seventh figure waved its three tails in the air threateningly as its insect like wings chattered flashing lightening._

_One of the watchers hesitantly tried to take a step forward, but was stopped by a white arm ending in claws._

"_Don't Hiyori, Mashiro wont recognize you."_

_The blonde girl glared at the speaker, her bared fangs hidden behind the mask that could no longer be removed._

"_Hiyori," this time a figure with blonde hair and bulky white bone armor across his shoulders spoke. _

"_Hiyori, don't. She wants to be with Kensei"_

_At that the girl reluctantly ceased her advances and slipped back into the ever-decreasing circle. Her own clawed hands shook as she desperately tried to hold them steady._

_They all watched in silence as their comrade buzzed into the air and disappeared, her lithe dragonfly's body seeking the ever elusive six tailed wind weasel._

_The three-tailed thunder dragonfly disappeared from the groups sight, leaving behind an ominous stillness._

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I slowly opened my eyes. It has been a while since I've dreamt of the Vizords.

None of us really knew what was happening until it was too late to do anything about it.

Our masks refused to fall from our faces, our flesh turned to hollow's skin (rock hard and bone white)…it is nightmarish to watch as you and your companions lose your forms and sense, only to be reduced to horrendous monsters.

I was the first to be afflicted with the advanced stages of hollowfication during my fight with Uliquorra on the battlements of Las Noches.

Love was the first to lose his mind; he was able to flee into the sea where he could sate his appetite with only unwary sailors.

Then it was Kensei and Mashiro, heartbroken, welcomed it when her turn came.

Hiyori disappeared after a long talk with Hachigen. We thought that she went west, but then Hachigen sealed himself into a cave somewhere so we could never ask to make sure.

His mastery of seals never dimmed for a moment.

Lisa decided to follow Rose when he transformed into a songbird or something, I last saw them in stone country sedately letting their echoes rebound together in the cloud hidden mountains.

Shinji stayed with me the longest.

He knew that, next to me, he was the most powerful, so when his time grew near he called on some favors in soul society (I think it was blackmail for Urahara) and somehow got his hands on a hollow restraining device from research and development.

It made hollows unable to leave Hueco Mundo.

I will never forget his face (which I knew would contain a wide teasing smirk despite the mask); or rather I would never forget his eyes.

He too knew we were a doomed species, cursed to forever fight our own spirits and not always win.

I then realized true loneliness, for I was last among the helpless.

After that I slept.

For as long and fitfully as I could I forced myself to stay seeped in sleep, so that I would not lose myself completely as my companions did.

It has worked, somewhat anyway, but I can never escape my own nature no matter how I despise it.

'But', I let my eye roam across the walls of my prison, 'I haven't lost myself yet and it has been at least a year or two…'

Finally my gaze stops upon the fragile looking paper holding the enormous gates shut. I squint at it, the delicate seals blurred but not altogether foreign to my eye.

Hey, you spend millennia or two with a few kido masters and see what that does for you.

Back to the seal, it looked really familiar, like a hidden…soul …storage… seal…

No.

Absolutely not, Toushiro would not be stupid enough to let Urahara seal that thing into a living soul, besides I thought it had been lost when we had defeated Aizen!

But still, tucked neatly in a crystal structure it sat.

The Hogyoku.

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Ok, I updated now review so I do it again!


	3. Chapter 3

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There have been several severly twisted obsessions that I have dealt with in my long lifetime.

Yamamoto's obsession with order, Zakari's obsession with fighting, Yachiru's obsession with sugar…. The list goes on.

But currently my obsession with trying to reach the evil oranamental marble eclipses them all.

Even Aizen's obsession with power that caused a tri-dimentional war looks punny in comparason.

It is maddening to have redemption so close and yet so far.

I can see the salvation of myself (away from this cursed body and back to a semblence of human form!) and the rest of the Viazards reflected within its crystal surface.

If I could reach its power I wouldn't be a slave to my instincts, I could return to the world without fear of destroying it, I could save Shinji from his forced exile and find Hiyori ,Lisa, and all the others. Then once we've proved that we were no longer monsters Soul Society may even let us back in, and I could see Rukia…

Of course my fantasies of a perfect world remain irreachable so long as that blasted seal on the door holds.

Because of that enchanted bit of paper I cant even let out my rietsu without suffering paralysis. Reaching out of the bars myself is out of the question.

Deciding that all hope was lost and I might as well get used to being a massive evil fox hollow, I looked at the overly large out of place TV hoping for some entertainment.

My host, for lack of a better word, was about five or six. When you've lived for a milenia the time tends to run together.

He lived at an orphanage with a gaggle of other snot nosed brats and always found a way to cause mayhem. It was better than day time cable.

Ah! Look how the soap opera unfolds today; our pint sized hero gets into a fight with a ten year old and his cronies, the attendant who is suppose to be doing something about this is purposefully looking the other way. And I thought my teachers were inattentive.

"_No one likes you, why don't you just go away, stupid!"_

Wow ,I applaud the ten year olds vocabularly.

"_Go away you fat meenie!"_

My host is barely keeping his emotions in check, evidenced by the turmoil going on in here. It's so adorable to watch chibi's fight.

"_What did you call me? Did you hear what he called me?"_

The mob of children murmer it's consent. My host backs up. Good to know he has some self preservation skills, even in the face of children twice his age.

"_Let's get him!"_

My host ran. Smart kid, when you can't win use tactical retreat.

The brat's fast for a toddler.

Unfortunately the other kids are faster.

I watch as he runs into a large building and up several flights of stairs, the mob hot on his heels. He searches around frantically once he's run out of stairs and crashed through a rusty door onto the roof.

Shit, dead end. I can already see this ending badly.

"_Where are you?"_

Luckily the brat has sense enough not to answer as he creeps behind a tall metal air conditioning vent. He keeps looking down past the foot wide ledge he's crouched on to the nice three story drop below him.

No is not the time to develop a fear of heights kid, trust me.

I can hear the gang looking around the flat roof, careful to keep away from the ledges themselves. Maybe they will be to scared to come over here?

My host apparently had the same thought as allowed himself to relax, cricis averted.

As always I spoke too soon.

"_Found him!"_

One of the kids had apparently heard my advice concerning heights too.

My host might have been caught, and he might have suffered a light beating, then a scolding from some angry adult for playing on the roof of an abandonded apartment building.

He might have, but he wasn't.

Instead he fell.

Shit.

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I could be mean and cut the chapter here, but I'm too nice. I better get lots of reviews.

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I sincerely expected turmoil to fill the inner world of a dying five year old.

Earthquake tremors, flooding, and maybe a few falling rocks; but somehow the dead silence and ominous stillness seemed much worse.

I could hear my own breathing, deep rattling slightly scary and sounding like a blacksmiths bellows, complete with intense heat.

A splash cracked the heat filled silence.

"Owie!"

I shrunk into the darkness my cage provided and watched, wary, as the thing approached.

It was my host. I don't know how I knew , never having seen the child before, but every sense I possessed including the sixth and seventh one were telling me that this tiny underfed toddler contained my near infinite power and the hougyoku within his fragile being.

The child sniffed and wiped his runny nose on the hem of his filthy shirt.

"Where am I?"

I debated whether or not I should respond. I have never been good with human kids (Nel counts as a non-human kid) and my form being that of a deamon fox probably will not help me in that department.

Unfortunately that decision was taken out of my hands when the brat collapsed and started coughing up blood.

Shit, I forgot he just fell off a building and probably is only here because of shock.

It reminded me of the first time I was in my inner world , but, you know, without the pit of doom and the fear of becoming a hollow…although Im not quite sure what will happen if the kid dies, will he become a hollow straight away because of me or will I be set free or…

_Cough cough._

Ok, enough speculation, dying host to attend to.

I can't filter my reitsu through the bars, maybe if he came closer, I mean since he is incharge of the seal theoretically he should be able to bypass it…

"**Brat**," oh great way to entice him to trust you. Not.

I clear my throat and try to start again, all the while keeping in mind that my time was limited and I was talking to a child.

"**You're going to die,"** wow Mr. Subtletly I am not.

"**I can heal you," **Ok that one was fifty percent lie. I think I can pump enough of my reitsu into you for you to gain a very weak semblence of my regeneration factor.

"**Come closer to the door of my cage."** That actually was required, but may not have been the best choice of words.

Luckily the kid didn't offer up any protests and dragged his quickly degrading body close enough to the bars for him to brush his fingertips across the deceptively flimsey wood.

Fortuantely that was all the contact I needed, more would be better but beggars cant be choosers, and his injurys in the real world were appearing on his spiritual body at a rate which denied him any form of further movement.

Quickly I focused on those fingers in contact with my cell and fed as much concentrated reitsu I possibly could into him.

He glowed an ominous red , but he stopped bleeding, for the most part anyway.

A far corner of my mind felt that introducing an uncontrooled amount of hollow reitsu into a still living human might have didasterous consequences in the later future, but that corner thought was squashed when I asked it if it preferred him dead now.

Slowly, very slowly the wounds started to ease shut. He won't be regrowing limbs anytime soon, but papper cuts will be an annoyance of the past.

Hurray for small victories.

Speaking of small victories my eye grazed past the healing child and landed on the jewel that I both cursed and revered.

A twisted plan wormed its way into my mind, and I fully blame Urahara for its conception.

I chuckle darkly and settle down for a nap, my eye watching my newest charge.

Maybe fate is finally done using me as her whipping boy.

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Omake

_Maybe fate is finally done using me as her whipping boy._

_An image of Orihime and her fairies with a long leather whip made him shudder._

_No definitely not._


	4. Chapter 4

_Sorry for the late update, I've been on vacation._

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The kid slept for almost a week, completely healed yet unmoving and unresponsive to the world.

At least that's how it appeared from the outside.

Inside his inner world he…. Well he was only asleep for about three days in there. Man, that boy can snore loudly for such a small kid.

He also sported a fancy new pair of whiskers on his cheeks. Come to think of it those might be my fault and not scars from his fall… whatever he's alive and I sacrificed a possible chance of freedom for that. Why did I do that again?

The answer hung happily in front of my cell, innocently driving me even further past the brink of insanity.

Oh. Right. That.

Currently said host was attempting to scale the wooden bars of my cell to reach said marble, upon my request of course.

He honestly responded pretty well to the situation of, you know, finding out he had a giant supremely powerful fox hollow in side his head.

He… well see for your self.

/_Flashback courtesy of the giant flat screen TV//_

The small blonde boy opened bleary blue eyes and sat up, cutely yawning while scrubbing at his face with a tight fist.

Having finished his morning ritual he stared in awe at the giant seemingly empty dark cage in front of him.

Eventually even he grew bored with that and fearfully spread his attention to the dark dank sewer around him.

"Hello?" he called, "is anyone there?"

A deep voice that shook the entire world answered.

"**Yes."**

Now let's stop for a minute and take a detour down psychology lane. It is a given fact that small children are known to put up faces of self-bravo to impress their piers or respected authority figures. Naruto subconsciously uses this tactic in the vain hope of gaining acknowledgement from the aforementioned group of people. He also has had to use this tactic when running from bullies or the occasional overly drunk civilian on his birthday. Detour over; you should not be surprised at what came out of Naruto's mouth next.

Quickly masking his fright the tiny boy stilled his trembling lips and shouted, "I'm not scared of you!"

The dark voice chuckled, "** You will be in a minute."**

"Nuh Uh!"

"**Oh?"**

"Ya! I'm Not scared of anything! Especially scary voices that don't come out of the dark! I dare you to come out, 'cuz I still wont be scared!"

"**Hahaha, alright, I'll come out. Just remember, I promise not to hurt you ok?"**

"I said I wasn't scared of anything!"

" … **That you did. Alright ,here I come."**

From the clinging shadows in the darkness beyond the cage door a pair of glowing red eyes opened. Naruto watched ,face slack, as an enormous four-legged monster emerged from the dark and smiled down at him with fangs longer than a man was tall.

Naruto sat in silence, having fallen back to the floor unknowingly.

"**Are you scared now?"**

Naruto screamed.

//_End//_

When the boy had finally screamed himself hoarse, which wasn't soon enough to preserve the visord's hearing, Ichigo calmly tried to explain what he was, where they were, and why the 'shiny marble up there' was so important.

Naruto was convinced that it all was a very strange dream.

"So you got sick and got turned into a giant monster and need my help to get the shiny thing to get better so you can go home and find your friends?"

Ichigo sighed, "**Sure, that's a pretty good summary."**

The blonde's face set itself into an expression of sincere heartfelt determination.

"Ok. Everyone wants to go home." And just like that he started an arduous climb up the side of the fox's cage.

In reality the seal containing the hougyoku was at most equivalent to the distance one must climb from the floor to reach the jar of cookies on the top shelf of the pantry, but Naruto was only about five, and those cookies are put in exactly that place to deter wandering toddlers intent on spoiling their dinner.

So ya, in proportion it was a long climb.

After a while even Ichigo became nervous of the boys determination and increasingly tall falls.

After one such fall caused by the surprise of his fingers brushing the ice cold charm's surface, Ichigo descended into a flurry of concern.

"**Are you alright? You didn't hit your head did you? Are you bleeding?"**

The blonde sat up unscathed, but this time his nose was scrunched up, drawing his expression to one of discomfort or confusion.

Ichigo was all of a flutter with worry. He may not be the best with kids ,but he was in possession of a protective streak which had in the past led his sister Karin to calling him a mother hen.

"**Are you ok? What's Wrong?"**

The child's confused expression depended and finally he said, "Why do you care?"

Ichigo's worries questions fell silent.

The blonde continued, " Why do you care so much about me? No one else does at the orphanage, not even the nurse lady who likes everyone and gives them lollypops, so why do you?"

The sound of dripping water filled the cell, and the boy stared up into the face of what unknowingly caused his turmoil, eyes moist.

Ichigo meanwhile was at a loss for words. **" I care," **he said at last **"because you are important to me." **

This time the kid did cry.

Before Ichigo could settle his frantic mind and attempt to comfort the blonde, the child had already begun once again to climb up the side of the cage.

"I'll get the shiny thing for sure this time!"

And the vizard could honestly say later that he was completely surprised when the tiny blonde did just that. His fingers stretching, reaching, clawing for the scrap of paper and the jewel attached to it.

With a soft rip and a crash Naruto was once again splayed across the ground , but this time he held his prize aloft in triumph.

The bottom portion of the seal suffered a minor tear but luckily still held.

"I got it!" proudly the wet tear streaked boy held the hougyoku in hand.

"**Very good!" **ichigo was trying to contain his excitement and keeping both his voice and reitsu under control, lest he frighten his host.** "Now give it to me, quick!"**

The blonde child scurried to the bars of the cage and reached his fist as far as he could into the darkness.

The jewel began to glow through his fingers, piercing the darkness with its blinding power and causing the water to boil into a thick mist.

I chigo made a strangled yelp before he too was enveloped.

As soon as it started it stopped. Very slowly Naruto opened his large blue eyes.

"Hey monster-san are you still there?"

Through the mist on the other side of the cage door something moved closer gaining definition.

First it was just a hand, tan and well calloused, then a torso clad in a tight black flowing jacket; Naruto's mouth fell open as he gazed up at the figure's face which was framed by long spikes of orange hair.

The figure knelt down and gently clasped the child's tight fist in his own. The top portion of his face was covered by a bone white mask which curved back around his head with two long horns that mimicked some animal's ears. The man smiled and Naruto noticed that he had three red stripes on each masked cheek.

"Call me Ichigo."

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sorry for the late updates on everything, I've been on vacation!!!!


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