The Last Shinigami

Disclaimer – This is a work of purely speculative fiction. It is not intended to infringe on any rights by and of the companies and/or individuals involved in the production of any series mentioned here. The characters involved are the intellectual property of their respective authors/creators except for the ones that are listed as an OC, which are mine.

A/N – 1. Hey everyone. Hope you’re staying safe and calm. Stay Healthy, folks.

2. The first chapter may seem like a short one for most of you, I know, I do feel the same. But the purpose of the first chapter was to show that Ichigo did in fact time-travelled. It did not show how exactly but that was by design. The story isn’t about how he did it, it is about what he did once he got where we wanted to be.

That is all. Enjoy the chapter.

-x-x-x-x-x-

(Fugai - 6th ward of Uncharted Districts, Rukongai, Soul Society)

Silence. Blessed silence graced him after what felt like years. He could still hear the echoes of the wails of trapped souls back in his mind even now, though they subdued. As though waiting for him to lower his guard so they could attack him once more with their persistent pleas for help.

Ichigo gasped as consciousness returned to him at last and he shot up from the ground, his mind a whirlwind of activities.

“Ack…ugh…” he coughed and wheezed as the air? burst into his insides making breathing a difficult process simply because of the ease with which he could do it?

Nonsensical explanations raved his mind and after hacking and spitting from his uncomfortable and somewhat painful awakening, his eyes opened wide, sharp and searching.

Trees. Green mossy grass. Small hills and unoccupied lands surrounded him as he swivelled to look around where he was.

A sharp cry of a raven in the near distance made him turn sharply towards the noise and a dry twig broke under his bare feet as his weight shifted to accommodate his balance.

A moment passed and just as he was about to question the veracity of his state of being, the memories of the past barreled into him like mountainous waves, crushing his perception with their ruthlessness.

“Karin! … Yuzu!” he breathed out as the final moments of their end flashed before his eyes.

With a subconscious effort on his part, he reached out with his senses in all directions, expanding, searching his treasures in a myriad of souls. Suddenly his mind caught the faint wisps of familiar presence.

‘There!’ his thoughts screamed at him, finally having found the subjects of his worried state. They shimmered at his periphery like two bright stars in his night sky.

A relieved smile tugged at his lips at his find and his throat closed up with emotion. ‘They made it…'

With a renewed vigour and a purpose that spoke of some urgency, Ichigo looked around him with a better understanding of where he was.

The strong presence of reishi in the air. The very subtle pressure on his being that spoke of reiatsu in everything that lined within his vicinity, living and unliving both. The ease with which his breaths came to him. There was no doubt…

‘Soul Society…’ he recognized with ease. “We did it!” he breathed, his brown eyes showing genuine surprise at the feat.

It was difficult, more than he’d expected it'd be, to see the ruined and destroyed place as it had been before the war… Filled with life and sustenance, housing within its womb, countless souls that lived out their ends.

Now that he was a soul, one among many, it was all too easy to feel its importance and what it meant for the world as a whole. And not just as some cosmic truth, though it was that, but as his own reality as well.

Though he could understand how he could have neglected to breathe in its essence in his past. Back then, he had been alive. Had a home to go back to, a family that waited for him. He could see how that could have stopped him from appreciating the marvellousness of Soul Society.

A brief moment passed in which he allowed himself the euphoria of actually achieving something they all had thought was a long shot at best, and then with ruthless efficiency, he curbed his enthusiasm by dousing it with cold water of reality.

This was not the time to celebrate their momentary victory.

Their work had just begun.

With that thought in mind, Ichigo stilled his movements completely and focused within himself to touch his mindscape after what felt like a lifetime.

It was infinitely easier than he had expected.

And wildly different than what it once had been.

Where the tall skyscrapers had once stood, tall and proud, there was nothing in sight but a plain white expanse of absolutely nothing.

Ichigo blinked. Twice. And then… the truth dawned on him.

There was a time when something like this would have surprised him, made him fear the unknown. But now, when he had done and seen things that he had and when he had gone through what would kill most people and come out of the quagmire with his sanity intact…it was simply another test of his acceptance.

Closing his eyes and with a single soft-spoken whisper, he broke through the barrier that was keeping him from reaching the spirit that lived inside him, “Zangetsu…”

Instantly, the white expanse shattered like a mirror with a tumultuous sounding crack!

A small smile tugged at his lips as he felt the cold wind touch his skin, telling him of another presence that had joined his side.

“Another test, I see,” he remarked, opening his eyes to look at his companion.

There, in front of him, covered in a bluish-grey, bandage-like carapace around his torso and his right arm, neck, and half his face hidden beneath a mask stood a tall, youthful, slender being with wildly flowing waist-length black hair and equally black eyes.

An open Shihakushō and a plain black Hakama fluttered in the gentle wind as the being looked at him with a hidden smile. A smile that he knew was so reminiscent of his own it was as though he was looking in the mirror.

This was the being who had been his truest friend and partner ever since Ichigo had become what he was always meant to be and had freed him from the chains that Yhwach and the hollow within him had bound the spirit in.

His true Zanpakuto Spirit.

Zangetsu.

“And you passed…” Zangetsu replied, his strong, bold, echoing voice differentiating him from the other imposters who had laid claim to his title.

“You taught me well,” Ichigo quipped.

Zangetsu looked at him with a raised brow at that. To his knowledge, in the short few years, they were physically acquainted with each other, Ichigo never truly stated his acknowledgement of him as his teacher, only ever treating him as a treasured friend. Oh, he readily showed his respect and trust he had in him without him ever having to ask for it, but for him to outright admit the fact…it was…different.

“How long?” Ichigo asked in a weary voice bringing Zangetsu’s attention back from his musings.

“Thirteen months…” the spirit answered honestly.

Brown eyes widened slightly at the answer before a tired sigh escaped Ichigo’s lips. “I knew it would take longer than it did before but…” he shook his head, unable to comprehend the time dilation while being stuck in the chaotic currents of Dangai Shiro.

Even though they both knew that it had been a necessity for what was to come, it still had been an arduous affair even though the results were exactly what they both had hoped for.

The power he had felt only once before in his life, thrummed within his being again, simmering just below the surface, ready to be called upon his need.

Looking at his companion Ichigo still asked, “Are we one?”

Black eyes bore into the brown ones as his Zanpakuto spirit deliberated until…until he saw what he had been looking for all along and answered with a proud countenance. “We are…”

The sigh of relief from Ichigo proved his loyalty much more than his words ever could.

Zangetsu had seen him struggle from the start – hidden behind barriers though he might have been – and he had seen how the taints in his soul had misguided him at every step of his journey.

Had he not been bound by their combined powers and had his powers not been diminished Ichigo’s inability to recognize his hidden presence, he would have torn the beings who had dared to call them Ichigo’s Zanpakuto’s spirts apart limb from limb.

A hand on his shoulder brought his boiling anger back to its cold simmering form and he saw Ichigo standing beside him facing in opposite direction extending his hand on his arm.

“You’re free now, Zangetsu. We…are free…” Ichigo whispered with finality.

Zangetsu looked at his partner for some time before he replied with a slow nod. “We are…” he echoed his previous statement.

As though it had never been displaced, Ichigo’s mindscape reverted back to its previous glory as the tall standing skyscrapers once again looked down at him with their protective shadows and the shining sun in the bright blue sky shimmered back into existence.

There were wounds there, they both could feel them, but they were beginning to heal now that they had hope once more.

The two friends continued to look far into the distance enjoying the absence of rain after a long, long time.

“You can sense them?” Zangetsu asked breaking their reverie.

“They’re nearby,” Ichigo replied with a nod.

“They might not be alone,” the spirit warned.

“Yes,” Ichigo agreed, knowing what Zangetsu meant. “Stay close…” he added even as his form began to fade back to the physical world. The whispered words of the Zanpakuto spirit did bring a content smile to his face though.

“Always…Ichigo.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Control.

It was, debatably, the most important thing Kisuke had ever taught him.

To have complete and utter control of his reiatsu. To understand it and know of its presence and capabilities as he did of his own body. To feel it living within him…churning with a cold fury that matched his own.

It had been a hellish training. Certainly more gruesome than any other he had ever done before. With the amount of reiryoku he had, the task had once seemed an impossibility. But Kisuke being who he was, had devised a way for him to attain it even though it had taken him far longer than they could afford.

Facing Benihime without his own Zanpakuto had been…interesting, to say the least.

But the war hadn’t stopped for him, waiting for him to become stronger. They had continued their fight. Even when town after town had been eradicated by the holy ones, they had continued to save all those they could while fighting their enemies at every step.

Ichigo never lost count how many people he lost in the gruesome attempts of a monster to achieve his perverse perfection of the world.

But he hadn’t let it stop him. He couldn’t. And eventually, when only Kisuke, he and his sisters were the only ones left to save the last vestiges of humanity who clung to a hope of their saviours, they protected them with everything they had, fighting the bloodthirsty holy army of Quincies and Hollows alike…all in a fevered state and with a single goal to save as many people they could, which usually involved anyone whom the newly proclaimed Soul king considered impure. For those who had died to save the world, their friends and peers, they could do no less.

And despite all his failures, despite all his loses, his efforts to better himself had never ceased.

But no matter how much stronger he got, the murderers had already done more than enough damage for it to matter anymore.

Yhwach. A – The Almighty had been most thorough in the subjugation of his subjects.

Coming back to himself, Ichigo asserted his will on his already restrained reiryoku with little difficulty that spoke of his experience. Suppressing it as much as he could, he reduced his presence to the levels it could be sensed once more.

In an instant, the subtle wafting spiritual pressure that he had gotten accustomed to, ceased abruptly, halting its outward flow from his body.

Surprised, though less so for having already suspected something similar to happen, Ichigo analysed the flow of his reiryoku within him and felt his reiatsu suppressed to the levels that none but only those nearby would even realise he was there.

He knew it would not be enough, though. He was not as intuned with his reiryoku as he had been before coming here. The detour – for lack of a better word – in Dangai had screwed up his painstakingly gathered control and no matter how much reiatsu he had receded within his body and no matter the distance from here to the Sereitei, a hint of his presence must have been noticed.

Especially by those who could look this far.

But without the seal that Kisuke had designed for him, it was the best he could do for now.

Hopefully, the fluctuation of reiryoku because of his spiritual pressure would be mistaken for a Hollow. He remembered Kisuske had chosen this location for a reason. Uncharted lands were known for the odd sightings of Adjuchas and even quite a few Vasto Lords who had managed to get past the barriers surrounding the dimension.

Honing on to the two reiatsu signatures that he knew as well as his own, he vanished with only a flicker to tell of his departure.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Rukongai. The wandering soul city. The largest and the most populated portion of Soul Society where the dead souls came to rest after living their lives, may they had been short or fulfilled.

Divided into three-hundred and twenty charted districts with eighty of them in all four directions, it was a massive expanse that contained billions of souls who lived their after-lives in the city before finally being reintroduced into the cycle of rebirth.

As one descended from the centre and went farther and farther into the massive city, they could easily see the depravity that souls had to live in to survive. It was a harsh life. Separated from the people one loved when they were living, nothing to live in but slums, the lives of the departed souls in these districts were truly hardscrabble, violent and crime-infested.

It was, therefore, a surprise for some residents who lived in one of the outer reaches of these districts when a tall, lean man with a muscular build, wearing scraps for a shirt and half torn pants walked through the narrow roads that separated the Sakahone and Sabitsura districts with silent confidence and without a crease of fear on his face despite being holding nought a single weapon in his hands.

Unusual did not even begin to describe the lithe man though. For one, he was sporting a most peculiar shade of spiky orange hair on his head and for another, and this was where their surprise came from, he did not have a scratch on his body even though the direction of his arrival meant that he would have no doubt had to pass through the dreaded Yaban'na tochi.

The savage lands.

Sabitsura district was said to be the last area where Shinigami patrolled, as little as they did anyway. While the whole society was supposed to be protected by the balance keepers, every soul beyond the fiftieth district knew not to expect much from the mystical protectors.

Not many souls from these districts became Shinigami. And those few who did, forgot about the pain of living here almost as soon as they got the taste of what the nearer districts had to offer.

Food. Money. Respect.

Rukongai had given them none of these things. Why would they ever return here just to be reminded of their painful pasts?

But the Sakahone slums…this town…it marked the first line where the real dredges of society started making their presence known.

And beyond even that…were the savage lands.

Where the counts of rape, murder & kill were the real currencies of trade.

No matter how much Central-46 wished to stop these crimes or curb them at the very least, the presence of the souls capable of hurting innocents was nothing they could ever control. Not this far in the wandering soul city. And certainly not with the number of Shinigami they had.

One such presence, Daichi Meishu, the local thug and self-proclaimed leader of the Sakahone Slums who controlled the streets with his fists and his loud-mouthed lackeys was sitting at his usual haunt, watching the oncoming orange-haired man with a disinterested frown.

“Oye! Tsubitsura! Why don’t you take the first crack at the fish, eh? Might impress that little cunt of yours. Hehahhaaaa…” a blonde man with a scraggly beard and filthy clothes jeered at the young addition to their gang.

“I might at that!” Tsubitsura, a young, black-haired, youth hollered back, rubbing his hands on his clean-shaven chin as he leered lewdly at the quivering woman in the open window on the opposite side of the road.

Unsheathing a poorly made Nagamaki that looked a little too big for his size, the boy casually walked towards the approaching traveller.

Tsubitsura timed his speed and stopped right outside the house where he knew his Yuki-chan was even now watching him with her cute face and prettily shivering body. As soon as he looked at her, he knew she would give him what he wanted. He had already taken her beside the barn far too many times, rutting her like his bitch for her to not know his needs anymore. He knew she was afraid of him… and it delighted him to no end. Her scared face reminded him of how her mother had dared to stop him once when he had decided to take what Yuki-chan owed him.

Beheading the bitch in front of his pretty Yuki-chan had made sure that she wouldn’t repeat her mother’s mistakes.

And he wasn’t disappointed when he saw her scared smile as she looked at him through the bars in the broken window.

Turning his attention back to the prey that was walking toward him of his own volition, Tsubitsura smirked. The man was tall, taller than him easily, but without a single weapon on him? his height wouldn’t matter one bit. He knew he had killed many taller preys before. This one would be no different.

Taking one last look at his boss and receiving an uninterested nod from the man, he began the entertainment for the night.

“Oye! Lost are ya, young sir?” he asked the traveller with faux politeness, hiding his Nagamaki poorly behind him as its blade peeked from beneath his filthy loose trousers.

The orange-haired traveller continued on his way without a single glance in his direction.

“Hehaaaahhaha… Is that all you got eh, Tsubitsura? Man! I knew you were a bitch-ass…see boss, didn’t I say he was nothing but a mousey little cunt…” his colleagues jeered as they saw him being completely ignored.

Anger surged within him as he heard the words that chipped away his hard-earned respect. An urge to disprove the lies the fuckers were spouting he turned sharply and with a rage-filled scream, attacked the taller man with all his might.

Blood spattered the walls of his Yuki-chan’s home and a smile bloomed on his face at the picture.

When the lithe traveller turned, Tsubitsura had expected to see his face filled with horror at what he had done to him but all he saw were a pair of bored brown eyes looking at him with an apathetic gaze.

And then he felt it.

Pain.

“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH…..”

Tsubitsura Yagushi screamed as he had never screamed before as a wide slash opened his chest cavity. Pain like he had never felt before engulfed him and he felt, for the first time, the emptiness of his hands.

His horrified eyes caught sight of his Nagamaki in the traveller’s hands and the last thing he saw before darkness descended on him was the glint of his own weapon as it came to behead him as he had done to countless others.

Ichigo looked down at the bleeding, headless corpse and flicked the poorly balance Nagamaki in his hands to remove the blood from its blade.

A slight glance to his side caught a young woman shivering behind a barred, open window as she looked at the corpse with wide eyes.

Silence reigned in the town as walkers-by stopped and looked the familiar scene that had ended with a distinctly different outcome.

And then Ichigo heard what he had hoped not to. He had thought that taking care of one of their hitters would be enough to deter his companions.

Apparently Not.

“Oye Oye! You killed him?” a moronic voice asked.

Ichigo shook his head. He didn’t have time for this. But a single look around him told him that he would have to indulge himself. All around him, people had stopped doing whatever they were doing before and were looking at him with wide-open eyes in which he could see their hopes for an end of their suffering.

Without them shouting it out, he could hear their pleas to rid them of these parasites who were leeching off of them for so many years.

A sigh escaped his lips and he turned around to face the exploiters. “I will give you one chance to walk away from this town. One chance,” Ichigo spoke in a calm, collected voice. “Whoever among you is calling the shots, take your men from this district and I will leave you be, you have my word.”

For the first time in a long time, Daichi Meishu smiled. It had been many a year since he had gotten a spark of entertainment. He knew this would be worth his time or at least, would break the monotonousness of his days.

“Oh?” Daichi voiced. “And you can back up that claim, traveller? I assume you can count?” he asked humorously, indicating the seven members of his gang surrounding him.

Two seconds.

That was all it took for the colours in Daichi’s vicinity to turn from dusty brown to a bloody-red.

As one, all his lackeys screamed the cacophony of death as Ichigo moved to stand an inch’s breadth away from the gang leader.

“One chance,” Ichigo repeated.

Fear gripped Daichi’s heart as his eyes saw everything surrounding him.

Every single man he had trained to keep the control of Sakahone slums stared at him with wide, horror-filled eyes, dead at his feet.

Daichi did the only thing he could.

He ran.

Slipping on the bloody road, he fell and crashed in the nearby garbage but his legs did not stop moving.

Soon he was but a speck of black in the distance to the villagers who were looking at the scene with much the same fear that had caught hold of Daichi’s heart.

Ichigo flung the blood sword at the opposite wall and it buried itself in the stone with a mighty sound.

“Clean this up when you can,” he gestured towards the bloodied corpses of the thugs that littered the road. “They won’t hurt you anymore,” he breathed and began to walk away towards the ruins of the village that he could see in the distance.

An hour later, he was crossing into the sixty-fourth district, a war-torn, burned village, when his thoughts returned to what he had seen.

Ichigo knew, even before, that the afterlife that many living beings hoped for was nothing as their thoughts. While there was peace in certain districts, there was also suffering.

Shinigami, no matter their might, could not be everywhere at once. They were too few for it to be the case. But there were others who did help. The Noble families for one. But even among them, there were very few who did much for those who were less fortunate than them.

He was not naïve enough to think that Soul Society could become the paradise that many thought the afterlife to be. There were simply so many souls for it to ever be the case, but, things could be improved.

At least he thought as much.

Shaking his head at what was probably wishful thinking on his part, he flared his senses once more.

He was close.

They were here.

Thinking for a moment, he decided to take a chance. Focusing the reiatsu at the souls of his feet, he realised it in a single controlled burst.

Everything blurred in his surroundings as he used his mastery over Shunpo to traverse the distance to the reiatsu signatures he could clearly sense now that was closer than before.

With a flicker, he arrived at the front gates of a dishevelled house that looked half-burned and dilapidated enough that no one in their right mind would ever think to call it their home.

Ichigo stepped inside the outer boundary of the house and moved hastily towards the front door. Dust, broken glass and soiled furniture welcomed him as soon as he pushed aside the broken door.

Ichigo smirked at the emptiness. His treasures had done well. There really wasn’t a single thing that spoke of any company the house might have had ever since its destruction. And the spell that hid them…it was a masterfully cast Kido. He’d expect nothing less from his treasures.

A single tendril of his reiryoku jumped between his fingers as he addressed the open air. As though sliding open a curtain, Ichigo gripped the open air beside him with his hands and whispered a soft, “Noren Mekuri…”

The world bent and shivered instantly, as the light scattered from beneath his hand and the illusion that had been placed upon the side of the wall shimmered away releasing a miasma of colours of brilliant shades that escaped with the bent light.

A relieved sight met his eyes as he saw the last vestiges of his humanity looking at him with their surprised and happy faces.

“Oniichan…” Yuzu Kurosaki jumped from the floor and flung herself onto her brother, her eyes dripping relieved tears as she squeezed him tightly.

Ichigo gathered his little sister and whispered sweet nothings in her ears as he consoled her with his presence.

Another missile hit his side and expanded the hug to look into the scared and familiar eyes of his other strong little sister, “Karin…” he breathed.

“We thought…we thought you…”Yuzu hiccuped, unable to complete her thoughts as she clung to his shoulders as her life depended on it.

Ichigo’s eyes welled up and he looked at both of his treasures with a sad smile. “I will never leave you…either of you…”

Karin hugged him and the tears she had been holding within for so long to keep Yuzu from falling apart, dripped from her eyes freely. Now, when she saw her big brother alive and well, just when she was beginning to think that something had gone horribly wrong…the dam that held back her emotions broke with a snap.

The three siblings spent the longest of time assuring each other of their presence and erasing the doubts that had begun creeping in.

Ichigo gathered himself and rubbed Yuzu’s and then Karin’s face with the torn sleeves of his stolen shirt. “How long?” he asked cupping Karin’s face gently.

Karin kept hold of his hand and looked in his worried brown eyes as she answered. “We…we arrived seven weeks ago. We waited nearby as we planned. We thought…We thought you’d be just behind us. But then a day went by and then two and Yuzu was getting weaker somehow I just…” she choked and Ichigo brought her into his arms to soothe her. “It…it was horrible Ichigo…” she mumbled against his chest looking at the sleeping form of Yuzu who had cried herself to sleep.

All three stayed that way long into the night with Karin recounting how they had stolen some food and when Yuzu had recovered her strength and travelled here using as little reiatsu they could.

Ichigo listened patiently, praised her for her actions and told her how proud he was of both her and Yuzu for taking care of each other when he wasn’t able to. And when he attempted to apologize for failing to protect them as he should have, Karin stopped him with a hardened gaze that he remembered all too well.

“You did protect us, Ichigo,” Karin hissed angrily, offended that he would consider himself a failure. “You taught us how to survive. Without your teachings…” she shook her head, unwilling to think about the horrors all of them had witnessed in the future.

Ichigo stopped her after that, knowing that the past few weeks had been difficult for his little sisters and asked Karin to rest. “I will watch over you. I am here, Karin. Rest…”

It took a while, and during that time all Karin did was look at him to make sure he wouldn’t vanish as though he were a figment of her stress addled mind, but when sleep took hold of her, she gave herself into to its restful arms because she knew now that Ichigo was back, she could let herself go.

He would protect her and Yuzu. Like he always had before.

And tomorrow…

Tomorrow would bring a new beginning. For all of them.

-x-x-x-x-x-

~ Review please ~

A/N – 1. Legend –

• Appearance of Zangetsu – Imagine Final Getsuga Ichigo with no black reishi surrounding him.

• Noren Mekuri – Nullifies types of illusory effects which may be used to conceal something from view. Extending their hand, the practitioner appears to be gripping thin air before stripping away the technique which is currently in effect. Doing so creates a light blue-violet aura around the object which is being revealed as it gradually comes into view.