Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter, Naruto Uzumaki, nor Bleach.
Summary: Harry's the Master of Death now. But what does that really mean? Follow the adventures of the Boy-Who-Lived, thrown through space and Time to prepare him for a confrontation a spirit of Life who hasn't been doing a good job.
Author's Note: Hikifune Kirio is a real character - the captain of the 12th division preceding Urahara Kisuke.
Harry
If he knew he was going to end up as a street urchin in the equivalent of heaven a thousand years into the past, he wouldn't have asked Fate to grant that specific wish.
But here he was, a month of District Seventy Three later, huddled in a little alleyway, trying to stave off the cold.
Harry looked around, even as the words "Good night and good luck", were whispered to him, and realized that he was unable to use any of the Hallows. Consequently, he employed a trick that Hermione would have killed him if she had known.
Fortunately, she wasn't born yet, and the Containment Rune that he'd etched on his left breast with the Veiled Spear easily held the three Hallows.
On the bright side, no one could see the Spear - they could only predict its existence when it was in his hands. He hadn't Unveiled it since he'd killed Voldemort, a thousand years in the future.
He had been tempted to, several times, but the Veiled Spear was sufficient to keep him safe.
He looked around. Too late - he was surrounded already.
"Give us all o' yer valuables, and we might think of not guttin' you, boy."
For a moment, Harry thought it'd be easy for him to escape, then he realized that one of the 'bandits' was a Shinigami.
He glared. The Shinigami who "patrolled" the Seventy Third district were corrupt and uncaring, but this was ridiculous. "You", he spat at the Shinigami, "shouldn't you be preventing this from happening?"
The Shinigami guffawed loudly. Harry clenched his fists. The man even had the gall to wear his uniform, the black Shihakusho, with a blade, most likely his Zanpakuto tucked into the hakama-himo that tied his uniform together, while mugging his victims.
"You're a disgrace. You're a guardian of dead souls, not a petty thief."
In a flash, his cheek was nicked.
Damn it all. That's the Flash Step, or something similar. He's much faster than I am.
"Shunpo?" Harry asked. The Shinigami nodded, a wild grin on his face, cruelty in his eyes.
"You're dead."
Harry had no doubt. Since he had completed Fate's mission, he wasn't protected by any of his impossible luck anymore. He decided that he wouldn't be erased from existence without putting up some sort of fight.
"Light in the Heart of Man, Lance of Blood and Water!" The Veil lifted from the Spear of Longinus, and Harry's magical power, made staggering by the Hallows, flooded back into him. He flexed his magical core, calling his magic to the forefront, and he thrust the Spear forward.
The Shinigami's eyes had widened. He had a relatively powerful Zanpakuto - even if he was unable to unseal it. But it appeared that the orphan turned victim in front of him had achieved Shikai, and his recently invisible weapon had emitted a kind of Reiatsu that most lieutenants would be hard-pressed to match. He brought his Sealed Zanpakuto (he never learned the name of it) up to block the weapon which could only be described as beautiful...
And the Spear of Longinus tore straight through the Shinigami's Zanpakuto and sank into the man's chest, destroying his soul instantly.
Harry's eyes widened. He had killed a grand total of two people now - Voldemort and some nameless Death God. But he had learned something very important. His magic had not left him - it was either contained within the Spear of Longinus, or only accessible when he removed the Veil.
He disappeared into the night, quickly Veiling the Zanpakuto with just a thought, and strapping it to his back. He knew that there would be an investigation soon, and he couldn't stay in district Seventy Three any longer.
Yamamoto
Yamamoto Genryusai Shikeguni was seated in his office when a burst of Reiatsu that was identical to that of the Spirit King's lit up like a Christmas light in East Rukongai.
He shot out of his seat, and let off a Kido spell that summoned all of his captains to his office.
"Yamamoto-sama", they all intoned, as they immediately fell into position in front of him.
"I have no doubt that some of you brats felt that earlier."
The Shihoin clan head, his Second Division commander spoke up. "Yes, I have sent Onmitsukido to investigate, Captain-Commander."
"This is unheard of. The Spirit King has either manifested himself once more, or someone has been tampering with the very laws of nature itself. We must find the individuals doing so, if the second is the case. There's no reason to believe that the Spirit King would appear in East Rukongai of all places."
Harry
He had just cleared District Sixty Eight when he managed to crash into a girl. It was his fault, really. He had whipped his head around when he thought he'd seen a Shinigami (if it was, the Shinigami in question had been using the Shunpo), and he'd barrelled into a very beautiful specimen of a soul.
"Whoah now", the girl breathed, surprised.
"Really sorry", Harry said, looking at the silent girl. Her hair was done into a braid that hung in front of her, and her eyes were a deep shade of blue. He could feel himself blushing. Asian girls, a victorious side of him that he identified as his libido crowed.
She smiled at him warmly, and Harry's blush deepened. "What are you running from?" she asked.
"Oh, I was just trying to get away from my old District..."
"Retsu. Unohana Retsu. At least that's what the lady at the orphanage told me before we ran away."
She was open, and rather friendly, giving away information as if it were free.
"Harry. Potter Harry. I'm sort of new - I've only been in Soul Society for a month. Not quite what I expected."
"Well, I was both born here - my parents were then reincarnated, so I ended up in an orphanage in District Ten. I ran away to see the world. Are you living on the street?"
Harry smiled sheepishly. "Yes, I don't know about any accommodations for new souls, and I was sort of... dropped here. I miss my friends..." he trailed off.
"You remember?" she wondered sharply.
"Remember what?" Harry stared.
"Your friends, family. Your life, Harry-san?"
"Of course I remember my life! How could I not?" Harry looked on bemusedly.
"I don't think that's supposed to happen, Harry-san", said Retsu.
"Right. Hope I see you again, Retsu-chan. I'm gone!" Harry shot off into the distance.
Retsu smiled and shook her head.
Harry
Harry was now in District Fifty Eight of East Rukongai, engaged in the process of "gettin' money". Gettin' money involved taking part in a semi-legal fighting club that was organized by a bunch of Shinigami with Kan (the currency of Soul Society) to spare. The prizes (for normal Souls only) included over ten thousand Kan for a win.
Harry didn't know much about martial arts - he'd been mostly proficient with a wand when he'd been a Wizard. But he had taken the time to learn one of Sirius Black's specialties, a technique invented by Frank Longbottom (who had lots of Magic and a very small repertoire of spells) that allowed him to magically charge his fists to punch holes in persistent doors. It wasn't very good for combat - he'd never used it against another witch or wizard, but that wasn't the case now.
Because he knew he had huge stores of Reiryoku (at least that's what he thought it was called. It could have been Reiatsu or something like that) compared to other souls. There was no reason to believe that he couldn't do the same thing. It wasn't cheating if no one found out, right?
No one did find out. That was why he was in the final round of the contest, having knocked out seven people with a single punch.
His opponent was a blond girl with green eyes and a lithe, muscular form. In the bouts she'd participated in, she'd taken lots of damaged, but had picked herself up effortlessly, and used her resilience and superior speeds to overwhelm her opponent. Harry thought she might have picked up the Hoho somewhere - the precursor to the Shunpo that he'd heard some green Shinigami discussing.
In any case, he needed the money, even if he had to punch a cute girl into submission. He frowned. Even two months ago, he wouldn't have even thought of this.
"Hajime!" the referee called.
The girl shot forward, her elbow flying at him. Harry fought the urge to duck, and punched back with a fist coated in Reiryoku, sending her spinning. She recovered immediately (which none of the other fighters had done - they'd stayed down, even the ones that weren't unconscious) and approached him warily.
"Your moves are sloppy. Your punches aren't in correct form. I watched all of your fights. What are you doing, exactly?"
Harry frowned, and they circled each other, staring at the other with the intensity of a hawk.
She leapt forward, bringing her leg up in crazy martial arts moved that Harry would have killed to emulate. He threw a Reiryoku laced punch to, once again, knock her away, but the leg wasn't there any more. A punch had slammed into his jaw.
The crowd roared as he was knocked on his ass. He bounded up quickly, forcing his Reiryoku to accelerate the healing. Damn it, she's good.
She frowned. "Everything I know about you would evidence that you should have been laid out by that hit." She glared. "How are you still up?"
Harry lashed out with an open palm, but she danced out of the way, kicking his elbow. Harry was glad that he had sheathed his entire arm in Reiryoku - it would have been broken otherwise. Even so, the kick nearly tore his arm out of its socket.
Ten thousand kan. He threw himself forward, protecting the majority of his body by spreading a thin layer of Reiryoku around (he wasn't proficient enough to spread it denser like Sirius could have with his magic), and rained punches on the girl, who ducked and dodged each one without retaliating. Then suddenly, her foot hit the side of his head, hard.
The Reiryoku took most of the damage, and while Harry's head snapped back, he was still able to land what looked like a glancing blow on the girl's solar plexus. The blow was laced in Reiryoku. The girl was knocked back hard, completely unable to breathe for a moment.
Harry knocked her out with a punch to the temple - one that wasn't as dangerous as his normal punches.
"Winner, Potter-san!"
Harry
"Leave me alone, please?"
"Not until you tell me what you did", the girl growled.
"Who are you anyw-"
"Hikifune Kirio. Now tell me."
"I don't even know you. What if I was on the run from an evil entity that wants to kill me to rip pieces of his soul off and put it into containers, and every single time I used my special power, it'd light up like a beacon and hundreds of his followers will show up to apprehend me, and put me in the dungeons of his right hand man, and lock me in there and torture anyone found with me by using Pain-causing Kido?"
"Wh-what? Are you joking?"
"Everything I told you was true." Harry wondered if he could consider the ability to say Voldemort's name a special power, or if she'd noticed that he had used the past tense.
The girl stared at him for a moment. "You're teaching me how to use your special power anyway. I want to get into Shinigami Academy, and if you don't teach me, there's no way I can."
"Shinigami Academy?"
"Yes. Don't you dare laugh because I'm a girl! I swear I'll-"
"That's not why I asked. What's the Shinigami Academy?"
"You don't know what the Shinigami Academy is?" she looked at him as if he were insane. "The Academy is six years long, and teaches you Zanjutsu, Kido, Hakuda, Hoho, and how to find your Zanpakuto. There's an entrance exam every year, and anyone can try - thousands show up, but they only let several hundred potential candidates in. I've... I've failed it three times. If you teach me, I could get into-"
"Who wants to be a Shinigami anyway? They're corrupt and incompetent. They're lazy, and they weak." Kirio looked ready to protest, but Harry continued, "I know people who would have kicked their asses when I was living."
"You remember your living mem-"
"Great Merlin, is there some sort of Kido that Shinigami use on everyone to make them forget their memories or something?"
"Yes actually, it's called a Soul Burial."
Harry gaped at her for a moment. "Really?"
"Stop distracting me! You're going to teach me how to do that trick of yours!"
"It's three o'clock in the morning. Those fights took forever. I want to sleep."
"How do I know you're not going to just run away?"
"You don't. I'm planning to, actually", Harry smirked.
"I'm not letting you out of my sight until you teach me, then!"
"O-okay. I'm going to go to sleep now." Harry walked into an abandoned alley that looked less dirty than it probably was, and laid himself down on a relatively clean cardboard board, sealing his newly acquired ten thousand Kan in his breast with his other valuables.
"You can't just sleep on the street!" Kirio exclaimed.
"I've been doing it for a month. Most people where I come from slept on the streets."
"Where did you come from", she asked, dreading the answer.
"District Seventy Three."
"The Seventy Third district? No wonder you needed tricks like that to fight. You can sleep at my place tonight, but only if you teach me how to do it." Harry looked at her uncertainly. "I have an extra bed..." she trailed off.
"Deal."
She led him to a nondescript flat, and fumbled with several locks for a moment, then pulled him into a living room/kitchen of some sort, and quickly closed the door, locking the three deadbolts attached to the heavy iron door. While District Seventy Three had been among the worst, District Fifty Eight was still pretty dilapidated, and had a lot of burglars.
He hadn't slept in a real bed since the night before Fleur Delacour's wedding. While snuggling in a transfigured couch with Hermione and Ron (there were no boundaries after a year-long camping trip) was nice, it didn't compare to having a pillow. He actually stayed awake for three minutes to savor the warmth and comfort it provided before falling asleep.
When he woke, it was to an amused girl shaking him. "Harry-kun, it's four in the afternoon!" she smiled cheerfully, holding up pictures of him drooling all over the pillow. He lunged at her, but she danced out of the way, and he landed on the ground face-first.
"Oww..." he mumbled.
"It's a great time for you to be teaching me!" She was seriously happy, it seemed, when she hadn't been hit multiple times. "I'll let you stay as long as it takes, but I doubt it'll take more than a day or two for me to learn it."
Harry nodded thankfully. Sleeping in a bed was like crack. Only more exhilarating and much more addictive. "Okay, let's get started." He paused momentarily to grin. There was no way that Kirio could figure out the Enchanted Punch (as Sirius called it) as a normal Soul, who probably didn't know any-
She had tried out multiple times for the Shinigami Academy. They probably involved Kido usage. He ground his teeth in frustration. She would probably get it in a day or two.
"Do you know any Kido?"
"Of course! I'm know five or six Spells."
"I want you to use a low level Binding spell on me."
"I knew this trick used Reiryoku!" She pointed her index finger at Harry and screwed up her face in concentration. "The wind pushes and pulls, and teaches restraint!"
Harry's arms were slowly pushed behind his back. He didn't even resist it - he knew he was capable, Reiryoku or not. "Right then. So, tell me what you feel when the spell takes hold."
"I'm supposed to feel something?"
Harry grinned. Maybe it'd take pretty long after all.
Harry
He made Kirio practice the first Bakudo for nearly a week before he finally gave up. The only progress was Kirio's ability in Kido. Her use of the spell had become more effective, and snapped Harry's arms behind his back pretty violently unless he resisted. She was getting restless. He decided that there was something wrong with the spell. "Will you let me try the Restraining cha- Kido on you?" Harry's mind had subconsciously decided that it was a low-level charm.
"Sure, do what you want", she grumbled.
He pointed his finger, and visualized her arm snapping back, drawing on his Reiryoku, which leapt from his hand, and pushed her arms together. Hard.
"Ow!" she screamed. Harry widened his eyes, and quickly cut off the flow to his Reiryoku. She stared at him, open-mouthed. "You said you've never done it before!"
"I haven't used any... Kido. I do know some little tricks though."
"But to do it without the incantation - you could be a Kido master in disguise or something!"
"I did tell you that I was on the run from an evil entity-"
"that wants to kill you to rip pieces of his soul off and put it into containers, and every single time you use your special powers, it'd light up like a beacon and hundreds of his followers will show up to apprehend you, and put you in the dungeons of his right hand man, and lock you in there and torture me by using Pain-causing Kido. You've told me multiple times." She took a deep breath. "That doesn't explain why you can do Kido without even thinking about it, or using the incantation."
"Let's move on from this. I know for a fact that you're supposed to feel something when you use the spell now, and that it's not broken like I thought. You have to keep practicing. It was three years before I felt... Would you believe me if I told you that humans can use something that Souls can't to cast spells? Living energy, so to speak? Magic?"
She stared at him incredulously for a moment, then nodded. "I guess that would explain why you were so good at this."
"Yeah. So with magic, it was years before I realized the exact amount of pull from my magical core. That was because I had a lot of it, for an eleven year old. Most of my friends felt the pull by three or four months. It's going to take between three months and three years, or even longer if you don't have any talent. I don't know any other way for you to realize it, but when you do, you'll be able to do Kido like I do, wandl- err, without incantation, I mean."
Harry
Luckily for Harry, the girl who'd begin calling him outoto-chan (Harry rolled his eyes at that) was either a prodigy, or Magic was just much harder than Kido. It had only taken the girl two months, and she was now able to do all types of things with her Kido that she told Harry, in no uncertain terms, that were impossible for a normal Shinigami. Of course, the stories that she told Harry of huge black holes, and spells that could destroy enter mile radii seemed to be a bit farfetched.
Harry wondered how that could be possible when they couldn't do something all wizards could do, and decided that it was either the fact that wizards were comparatively domesticated, or that Shinigami lacked creativity. Big bolts of lightning indeed!
Now that she could feel her Reiryoku, however, it was a simple matter to teach her how to charge her body parts with it. Harry didn't like to admit it, but he learned a lot about Hakuda, watching her fight.
She had taught him more than that though. She had taught him some meditation exercises she had picked up from years of listening to Shinigami talk, and he'd had spoken to the Spear of Longinus for the first time. She had nearly fainted when she realized that he had discovered his Zanpakuto, and had learned its name without ever speaking to it.
He grimaced as he thought of it.
He had laid the Veiled Spear in his lap, put the Cloak on, slipped the Stone onto his right ring finger and grasped the Wand in his left hand.
"Hey", he called to the shape perched on a hill.
She ignored him.
"Hey!" he shouted again. Very suddenly, he was pinned against the ground, and she was young, platinum blond, well endowed, and smirking.
"Is the Master here to see me?" she winked.
Harry pursed his rapidly drying lips, fighting the impulse to lick them, and swallowed heavily. The woman was very beautiful - her face was regal, her cheeks high, but her eyes were pools of ink that gave off a green glow. The same bottle green that his eyes were. The same bottle green that the Killing Curse was.
"Are you the Spear?"
"Spear? The word is so... phallic." Harry blushed. "I prefer Light in the Heart of Man, but you know that already."
"Is death truly in the heart of man?" Harry chuckled disbelievingly.
"Oh yes. Man has killed more of his own kind than anything. It is so prevalent in here", she tapped his chest, "that even in death, man has found a way to erase others from existence."
There was a comfortable silence as they both stared at the inky black sky.
"Who are you, exactly?"
"I'm all your desires." She shifted into an imitation of Ginny, of Cho Chang, of the girl he had met in District Sixty Eight, Retsu, and then into his mother.
He sprang back.
"Hush. Everyone wants mommy or daddy at some point." She sauntered towards him, removing the kimono she was wearing slowly.
"Away!" Harry pushed himself back, and collided against an inky black barrier.
"You're too noble for your own good. Most men would-"
"I don't care what most men-"
"This is sort of like wanking, isn't it? I am, after all, part of you." She winked.
"You're not. You're only hear because of the Hallows."
"The Hallows." She shifted back into the pretty platinum blond again, and for a moment, her face wasn't so certain. "Do you know what the Hallows are?"
"No. Would you-"
"You will. There is nothing like them in the world, or even Rukongai. They are unique. Perhaps, in time, you know that they aren't the reason that I appeared to you, but that I was the reason they appeared to you."
Harry shook his head confusedly for a moment, but it appeared that he was within Kirio's flat again.
He didn't know what to think of Light (as he began to call her).
"We better leave, outoto. It's four months until the next Shinigami exam, and from all the fighting, we've gathered around fifty thousand kan. That's probably enough to live comfortably for a while. The exam is held in Junrinan, in West Rukongai. It takes around three months to get there on foot. It should be two, but... stuff happens, and I've missed the exam before. But I have a good feeling about this exam, and I think we should go now."
Harry nodded, and lamented the fact that Transfiguration was completely incompatible with Reiryoku. He wasn't going to be in a bed for a while, once again.
Author's Note
Right. I needed an older character, someone who could have been of Retsu's (and now, Harry's) generation. I scoured the interwebz, and discovered Hikifune Kirio, who was the 12th division captain before Urahara Kisuke. She went off to the Royal Guard a hundred and ten years before Canon, and nothing much else is known about her. She's not going to have any Harrytime. It's strictly Harry/Retsu.