Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. Masashi Kishimoto owns Naruto and Tite Kubo owns Bleach.
Demons Within
Prologue
I tried to understand him.
*CLANG!*
I guess it was futile.
As he vaulted over his opponent, his sharp blue eyes saw an opening. He instantly launched a handful of shuriken.
Retarded blond. Why doesn't he get it?
Sharp pain erupted from his thigh. Dangit! One of those stupid blade things. Shuriken was it? Whatever. "Getsuga TENSHOU!"
The blond landed and spun to face his orange-haired opponent , greeted by a wave of bluish-white energy. It enveloped his whiskered face, expression showing surprise that quickly shifted to panic.
In a World with demons, man quickly learned that banding together meant survival. Individual families joined to form clans, which in turn found other clans and created "nations". Nations stood together against the onslaught of the Hell demons and the tailed beasts.
The first wave of demons was the Summons. Irregularly large toads or snakes were seen roaming the countryside in clans. Humans were afraid of them, and often hunted them or just avoided them. They eventually made direct contact with humans, stating their peaceful intentions and telling the story of their misfortune. Their World became corrupted by the sinister power of the "many tailed monsters" residing within. Its equilibrium was thrown off, causing its natural forces to slow down or reverse. The World eventually started to burn, and the only escape was to leave. Humans welcomed them, so long as they surrendered some of their kind as servants for the humans. These became known as the Summons, because they could be called or "summoned" at any time for help.
As time went on sightings of otherworldly and spectral creatures were reported. They were large, monstrous creatures with terrifying white masks and holes in their chests. These reports were largely ignored, people disbelieving the ghost stories. They were ignored, that is, until these "Hollow" started attacking clans. Not knowing how to combat them, the humans turned the Summons for help. The only explanation they could give is that they were simply the mindless souls of their former comrades.
For most demons, the only way to cross the barrier between worlds was to abandon your mind and allow your essence to come through. The only trouble is, once on the other side, one was just an insane monster, warped by the passage through the barrier. So, in essence, one exchanged its sanity for a mask that would bind it to the world. The Summons were demons who found an alternate route. They simply possessed the will-less bodies of animals that were already in the world, abandoning their physical bodies instead of their minds. They still remained powerful, but they lost their humanoid shape.
Because of the rising number of Hollow attacks, humans decided they needed to be eliminated. Hunting parties were formed to track the Hollow and destroy them. This daunting task was easier said than done. Many of the first movements against the Hollow resulted in destruction of entire villages, leaving the villagers scarred both physically and psychologically.
During some of the earlier skirmishes, it was found that the masks that the Hollow wear are the only medium binding them to this world. These were granted by the World in exchange for their minds. Once destroyed, its soul returns back to Hell, as the other world became known. With the knowledge of how to effectively kill them, Hollow became much less of a problem. Peace is only temporary where there is evil, though.
They arrived with fury and destruction. The tailed beasts, or Bijuu, had had enough of their ruined World and decided to follow where so many others had already escaped to. Because of their , they were able to breach the barrier between worlds, opening a hole to Hell without sacrificing their minds or bodies. The Gate, as it was dubbed, actually opened the barrier for any demons to pass through. The corrupted spirits of Hell then poured out to vanquish this newfound World in the name of the Kyuubi, leader of the Bijuu.
Clans were slaughtered, villages were leveled, and nations cowered, submitting themselves to the Bijuu and the Kyuubi. They were tricked with the promise of mercy, only to end up food for the tailed-beasts, or slaves for the army. Torture and rape were not uncommon for the poor victims of the scourge.
The Summons felt responsible for the state the World was in and vowed to help the humans fight back. In order to help them, they taught them about the energy of the World that was inside them, divided into pathways that ran through their bodies. Some called it chakra, others called it reiatsu. The Summons instructed humans in the use of this energy, teaching them how to create techniques to combat the Hell demons.
The techniques greatly strengthened human forces, but the strength of the Hell demons was so overwhelming already that they were still far short of matching their enemy's power. So while Summons were instructing them in the use of chakra or reiatsu, humans were creating more effective and powerful weapons. Most of the more common weapons were adaptations of farming tools, swords being fashioned from machetes and spears or pikes from pitchforks. Weapon smiths soon emerged, creating new weapons that were more efficient for killing, often times being composed of metals that channeled the energy of the wielder.
Once equipped both with weapons and techniques, humans were able to match the strength of the demons. Two nations that became more prevalent among the peoples were the Nation of Fire and Soul Society. They both stood out because of their special sealing techniques that they developed to combat the demons.
The Fire Nation, so named because of their burning passion on the field and their prowess with fire jutsu, as they called it, was home to the Shinobi, or death servants. They created sealing jutsu that would capture a demons raw power and extract it from its body, leaving behind its will. Without their chakra, the demons life force would be stripped, and they would die.
Some of the demons had special properties acquired from their corruption in Hell. Some had powerful eyes, while others could manipulate shadows. When a Shinobi absorbed one of these more powerful demons, the powers were transferred over to his body, forever augmenting his combat abilities. These changes became hereditary, and were referred to as Bloodline Limits. Clans with Bloodline Limits soon became prevalent in the Fire Nation.
Soul Society took a completely different turn with its sealing techniques. They didn't believe in stealing the demons powers, claiming that humans with demon reiatsu would become as corrupted as the demons themselves. The Shinigami, or death gods, focused on bettering themselves and their weapons. They created the Zanpakuto, a sword that became bound to its user upon creation. The sword was created through a special ritual that took place at a Shinigami's initiation into the training academy.
Since Shinigami had no interest in the demon's power, they developed a sealing technique that would simply expel the demons from the World and send them to a special World that the Shinigami had found. It was an uninhabited World with an exceptionally powerful barrier, making escape impossible. They named it Hueco Mundo.
With the rising threat of the "Sealing Nations", the Kyuubi became more ambitious in his campaign against the humans. He became all the more ruthless, increasing the number of troops on the field at the cost of the protection of the Gate, the passageway to Hell. His idea was to subdue the weaker nations and then focus full attention on the Sealing nations.
What he didn't account for was the Sealing nations abandoning the other nations completely and focusing full force on the Gate. The Fire Nation and Soul Society wrote up a treaty, where they agreed to work together until the war was over. Together they assaulted the weaker forces at the Gate, and easily overcame them. The Shinigami were left to guard and find a way to close the Gate, while the Shinobi went after the Kyuubi and the other Bijuu. What Soul Society didn't know was that the Fire Nation was enterprising on the arrangement, all too anxious to bind the souls of the tailed beasts into their soldiers.
The Fire Nation was careful not to underestimate the Bijuu, and made sure to create a flawless sealing jutsu. The overwhelming power and will of the Bijuu would crush the body of any host they could supply. It would be impossible to try to separate the chakra from the body of the beast. That much chakra would destroy the body before it entered. The only way to seal them was to convert the physical body into a container for the beast, and then seal the whole thing. Even this would not work very well, though, for having the sinister will of a tailed beast inside would break the spirit and mind of any adult human.
The solution was to use newborns. At birth, a baby has no will to break. Experience creates a will, a resolution. Babies would simply be containers that could be trained. Then, as they would grow, the children could be trained to harden their will, and its body would adapt to the power of the tailed beast. They could eventually be trained to take control of the Bijuu's power and use it as their own. Thus, the most powerful Shinobi alive could be created.
And so, the Jinchuuriki were created. The Shinobi hunted down and sealed all of the tailed beasts within newborn children. And with the Kyuubi sealed, the remaining Hell demons were simply hunted down and destroyed. After the closing of the Gate, the Hell demon invasion became a memory. Well, at least for most.
The two Sealing nations forever remember the crisis. Bitter at the betrayal of the Shinobi, the Shinigami broke off all ties with them, promptly ending the treaty. They even rejected their Summon helpers, never forgiving that they led the Bijuu to this World and that they were originally demons themselves. Also, the Shinigami had a deeper secret.
The Hollow, now a long disregarded enemy, had been massing and beginning to form wills of their own. Understanding each other, they grouped together and formed a disorganized army of sorts. While the Shinigami were at the Gate, Soul Society was left with little to no defence. The Hollow marched on them, slaughtering the civilians and razing the village. The survivors were left infected, their seed mixed with the demons they so despised. Returning to their home in the state it was in was enough to send many of the warriors into a rampage. Needless to say, the Hollow there were obliterated. Now with nowhere else to direct their fury, the Shinigami began "cleansing" their seed. All who had been attacked became hunted by the Shinigami, and few escaped. They fled to smaller nations to start over, utterly betrayed by their own.
The Shinobi, on the other hand, embraced the Summons, creating homes for them where they could settle down and establish clans. The Shinobi made jutsu that would allow people to make contracts with the Summons and conjure them for aid in battle or other matters. In the end, it came down to Shinigami rejecting the demons, and Shinobi embracing them wholeheartedly.
And in secret, both sides who carried demons within were carefully nurtured and shaped into the most powerful warriors the World had ever witnessed. The Bijuu were passed down through the generations, and the taint of the Hollow was passed through from each father or mother to their children.
Author's Note: I realize that this part has absolutely nothing to do with Naruto or Bleach. This entire chapter only serves to show how I combined the two universes (if that's a word) and to create a setting. This setting is completely mine, the characters and location names are not. This kind of turned into Bleach being wedged into Naruto-verse, but know I tried to balance it. All comments greatly appreciated, especially comments pertaining to grammar usage and possible story balance.