Ichigo Kurosaki was feeling very well.

Very well indeed. Too much well.

He looked around, and realized that his Final Getsuga Tenshou hadn't dissolved yet.

Then he realized there wasn't ground under his feet anymore. Or in any direction. Ichigo could see his own body, but everything around him was darkness.

Then Ichigo saw it. That terrifying thing. The giant red eye, far bigger than him, observing him.

"So that's how it ends?" said a voice behind Ichigo.

Ichigo turned around, seeing someone behind him. He saw a teenager, just like him, but his eyes were colored with the same red of the giant eye.

"Who are you?"

"You will know my name, Ichigo Kurosaki. What I needed to do was already done. But I think I can ask you one thing: protect Naruko Uzumaki, Ichigo Kurosaki."

"Who is Naruko Uzumaki?"

The boy began to cry, but at the same time smiled. Ichigo was confused, but didn't know what to do other than ask.

"One smile is good enough before dying..."

As Ichigo blinked, he saw the battlefield again.

And as he looked at Urahara, he saw a face full of fear.

"Kurosaki, your power don't should have dissolved already?"

Ichigo looks at where Aizen should have been. There was only a pillar on that place. His prison.

Ichigo looked at his hands.

"Urahara, would you believe me if I saw something and it really looked like a ghost?"

There was only confusion left in Urahara's face.

As his powers showed no signal of deterioration, Ichigo had to be brought to the Soul Society for further examination.

"Can you reduce your Spiritual Pressure?"

"Yes, I think so."

Ichigo concentrated in reducing his spiritual pressure. His hair and appearance even turned to normal, but that hardly surprised him or the other two people present in the room.

"Good, but you know what would be more good?"

"No."

"If I could understand this, and weaponize it." said Mayuri, irritated by the lack of possible hypothesis he could think about.

"I could use my bankai if this is truly impenetrable to you Mayuri" said Unohana, calmly watching Mayuri examining samples taken from Ichigo. More exactly, his hair and his blood.

Ichigo gulped at that. He had no idea what possibly could be Unohana bankai, but something was telling him it would something very useful for surgeries.

"That's how you joke Unohana? I rate it 5, out of 10." answered the scientist, still annoyed.

"My problem anyway is not obtaining samples of the type you could probably obtain. It's just that Ichigo's spiritual powers should be completely disintegrating by itself as result of overuse. He's like a nuclear core that suffered a meltdown, but it just keeps emiting radiation. There's apparently an infinite engine running inside him somehow, creating more and more spiritual energy, like an endless spir..."

A sudden earthquake made Mayuri stop talking.

Ad then, almost like the world wanted to badly replicate the last words that had come out of Mayuri's mouth, space began to distort itself, into a spiral form, sucking him, Ichigo and Unohana, at least to as far Mayuri could see.

Ichigo saw it again. The giant red eye. He tried to look around to see the black-haired boy, but instead he found a weird masked man, looking at him with contempt.

"Ichigo Kurosaki, eh? You know what they say about the best moment to kill? Is when your opponent don't knows anything about you to predict your next move."

Quickly, a giant deformed Hollow limb grew out of the masked man's left side.

"I can sense this isn't your real physical body, but believe me, this thing here can kill you in both dimensions. Say hello to your father to me in...the next incarnation. Or no. Maybe you're gonna reincarnate...as a strawberry."

Ichigo didn't know what the hell was gonna happen, or why the masked man mentioned his father, and he never got to check to see if the Hollow limb could really hurt him in the form he was there, as he felt pushed by a giant hand away from the masked man, who completely missed him.

"Dammit! Kakashi, you sacrifice your l..."

Ichigo couldn't hear the rest of the masked man's words.

He only felt the cold, hard ground. And the smell of grass.

And a weird sensation running thorugh his arm.

"Ah, so that's how the shinigami looks? Ha, you're kind of handsome." said Minato Namikaze, the fourth Hokage of the Leaf, seeing the results of his last summoning jutsu

"Minato, you have to find another vessel. We don't even know if Naruko will be able to use the chains to control that thing!" yelled Kushina Uzumaki, his wife, a woman at the gates of Hades, but that hadn't lost her will to live yet.

The beast, the Nine Tails, simply roared in rage, unable to free himself of Kushina's chains.

The name "Naruko"made Ichigo finally get focused at something. He was still very confused about where he was.

"Naruko? Naruko Uzumaki?"

Minato looked at him.

"Yes, our daughter. I'm gonna use you to seal the Nine Tails in her. Well, half. The other half is gonna go with me to your stomach sihingami."

Ichigo wasn't getting it, but the constant roaring of the giant animal near him was making him desire for answers as fast as possible.

"This can hurt her!?"

"Yes, yes it can! Please Minato..." Kushina fell down on her knees. Her wounds were only going to get worse, she knew it.

"I have no other option! The Nine Tails needs to be contained in a vessel, if she dies and resurrects later that masked man will be able to control her again".

Ichigo quickly began to associate the person in Minato's sentence to the person he met at barely 60 seconds ago.

He looked back at the beast.

"Then seal it on me!"

Ichigo didn't even know if it was possible. He had no idea why he had to protect Naruko. But if that message was sent to him, he thought, it had to mean something.

"What? You're a shinigami, you're not physical!"

Ichigo almost agreed with Minato, but then he realized Kushina could somehow see him. Maybe she had spiritual powers, or maybe he was somehow physical and visible in the place where he was.

Ichigo moved his hands towards Minato's shoulder and, to the shock of both, they felt each other.

"What the hell? The Yamanaka clan said spirits can't be touched!"

Ichigo had several questions to do, but no hurry to ask it now.

"Do it already!"

Kushina collapsed on the ground. The beast moved towards the Hokage.

"Die" was the only word coming out of the beast's mouth.

Minato craved his fingers on Ichigo's stomach. He was almost sure he could only manage to seal half of the beast, making the beast become smaller, but he was relieved when instead the claws began to evaporate before hitting him and Ichigo.

The beast roared in frustration as it was sucked inside Ichigo's body.

Ichigo felt like he had the weight of the world pressed against his stomach, and panted as the sealing ended.

He could swear to be hearing Orihime's voice right now. Was that too much for him? Was him dying?

Minato fell on the ground. At the side of his wife, soon to be widow.

"Minato..." whispered the redhead.

"It's okay. Naruko will be a normal kid. I'm sure she's going to be the first female Hokage now. Tsunade could have been the Fourth, but she refused to."

"Don't say things so idiotic as his last words, you stupid...I love you, I love you..."

Minato closed his eyes. The Fourth Hokage was dead.

And Ichigo saw his soul enter through his mouth. He wished to puked it out, but he felt forced to swallow it.

"What kind of technique is this?"

Ichigo heard Orihime's voice again. He turned his head around and wondered if this long day could end and if the next one could have less surprises.

Orihime was really there. Running right in his direction.

Ichigo fell, unconscious. That was too much twists for one day.