Welcome back everybody to another chapter of this rewrite of Eternal Ballad. I know I said that I was going to upload every two weeks but I was done with this chapter and I couldn't keep it away from you all for another week. As always I will be responding to comments that took place between chapters and I am still asking if anyone would be willing to be a Beta Reader for this story. Anyways, let's get onto the comments.

DRADX: Ichigo's name being the same was an edit from the original that I made due to confusion. Ichigo is Ichigo and will always be Ichigo, one who protects, thank you for reading and I agree with your statements. Hope that you continue to read and that the story meets and moves beyond your expectations.

Dragon Kind Hecht: Thank you and I find it hard to think of pre-Gotei Unohana as anything less than blood thirsty. Sure she can curb it but I doubt it would ever fully go away. Not with how quick she could get into that same mindset when Shunsui needed her to in order to train Zaraki.

Dr1zzy: Thank you and I hope you continue to enjoy this story.

Austhin H7: Kyoka Suigetsu does need some love and the answer to your other question will be answered in future installments of this story.

aGnamZer0:

Chapter 1: Thank you for enjoying chapter 1 and it does look like Zangetsu and the other spirits have much to answer for when they are unlocked once more.

Chapter 2: Whether Ichigo's new personality will take over for his old one or if it will slowly imitate his old one is something that will be found out in future chapters. The story about how Ichigo came to have Kyoka become a part of his collection of spirits is something that deals with the divergence in the timeline that lead up to the start of this fanfic. To give you a hint, Ichigo was late at a crucial moment in this universe when he was not in the canon one.

Thank you to all of you who reviewed as your reviews help keep me going and keep writing. I have a very busy life as I'm a part of the military and that makes it hard to stay focused on writing as well as limiting the time I have to write so seeing your comments and reviews really helps a lot, even the negative ones. I appreciate all of you and I hope to see more of each of you in future comments. Thank you and now onto chapter 3.

Ichigo Kurosaki

Opening his eyes, he was met with the same dream once more. He was standing in a single room surrounded by mirrors, each had a different reflection. One of him when he was apparently much younger and wearing what appeared to be a uniform of some kind. Blazer, undershirt and dress pants being the main ensemble. Another reflection showed him in black hakama and a shihakusho with an over the top meat cleaver on his back that was wrapped in bandages or other kind of cloth he couldn't discern. On and on with more ridiculous, although minor, changes with each new reflection till the last was a perfect copy of himself. This one has dichromatic eyes and his current attire; black hakama and a black jacket that was left open with a red fur trim.

It confused him the more he stared at each reflection. That was before they changed, each time he found the dream, his skin would grow paler or hair would change color. Outside of their alien appearance, Ichigo had trouble thinking about them outside of the dream. It was more deja vu that he recognized them when he entered the dream again. He also saw them when he tried to contact Kyoka but none of those attempts had succeeded as of yet, only succeeding in pissing him off more.

"Not yet, soon you will need me again. But not yet." Ichigo snapped around but the owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen. As the world started to fade to black as was the usual end, Ichigo called out to the darkness.

"When?!"

"Soon." And the mirrors collectively shattered.

BOOM!

Ichigo casually turned to stare into the distance. The smell of smoke reaching his nose, even through the torrential downpour he was walking through. Soaked through, he had foregone his usual attire in favor of wearing just his hakama. It was a waste to wear more and have to deal with letting the other clothes dry.

It was the middle of the rainy season in the west rukon where Ichigo and Unohana had made their new home. Between training in zanjutsu and learning to master his ever growing power, Ichigo fought to keep his downtime personal. This time he had set out to explore the surrounding forest.

Reaching a hand to the trunk of a fallen tree he sighed.

"You're lost." Turning to find nothing, Ichigo kicked the tree, forming a small dent.

"I'm not lost." His scowl deepened as he felt more than heard a snicker resonate from within.

"You can't keep anything hidden from me."

"I told you to respect my privacy." Another snicker as a woman emerged from the trees and made her way over to the drenched Ichigo.

"I don't remember you saying anything of the sort." He snorted.

"Of course you don't. Convenient." She pouted momentarily before skipping over to him and grabbing his arm.

"You can't be serious all the time, don't you like being able to talk out here?" His scowl wavered for a moment.

"It's not that." He couldn't see but rather feel her concern. She worried too much for his liking. He could take care of himself if worse came to worst.

"I'm not worried about that and you know it." He didn't want to believe it though. She didn't have to…"I want to though. If you cared about your mental health as much as your physical health then I wouldn't worry about either."

Ichigo released a breath of frustration before pulling her arms off of him and picked a random direction. He didn't care where he went, as long as it wasn't there. He needed some time to think. With his back turned he failed to see the look in Kyoka's eyes as they softened and a single tear rolled down her cheek before sliding off of her face. The single tear smashing into the ground and shattering like a piece of glass.

If he wasn't lost before, well, now he was. The forest that surrounded their home confused Ichigo. It all looked the same and his frustration with both that and his now silent zanpakuto was reflected in the line of stumps that trailed behind the soul.

He had also made the line so he could keep going straight, knowing that eventually he would find a landmark that he could use to find his way back home. A mountain to climb would be nice but anything worked for the troubled man.

Thinking about the conversation over his journey he reflected on Kyoka's words and the more he thought, the more his head hurt. He knew she was right but he wasn't quite ready to admit it, not yet. The silence inside his head was also deafening, normally he would be having a conversation with her but she hadn't responded in the last half hour that he had been walking so he brushed the thought to the side for the time being.

It didn't take long, however, for him to stumble across something he could use. A river. It was swollen from the heavy rainfall but he could still follow it since he knew that the river would eventually circle around towards his home as a stream that came off of it fed into the small pond that sat outside his home.

Walking the shoreline he watched the water flow and his mind started to shift to a memory that had been at the forefront of it for at least a few months. Not really a memory per se but an image. A river that was very much like this one that had some kind of stone pathway running beside it. He saw a tiny hand that was interlocked with a much larger one and from that perspective, he knew that the small hand belonged to him. He saw a girl sitting at the edge of the river as well and he knew that the younger him wanted to save her but he also knew that something bad had happened that night. Something that made a pit form in his stomach that told him that the girl or the river or something about the scene was wrong. That something happened that night that was important to him.

Brushing the thought out of his mind for a moment he barely had enough time to comprehend that the ground was rushing up to meet him before his head collided with the ground. Right as he hit the ground his vision was overtaken by the memory that he had just been reflecting on and he heard a woman scream his name in panic before darkness took him. His last thought before blacking out was.

'Mom'

"My fucking head." Slowly rising to his feet while holding his head, Ichigo took in his surroundings. He was by a river, that was right. Thinking back to the last thing he remembered, he recalled walking along the shore in the hopes that it would lead him home. With the rain pouring, he had no way of telling how long he had been out but the sun was at its peak for the day and he was training in the evening before he had ventured out so he figured around half a day had gone by.

"Unohana is going to kill me." Rushing to his feet he saw something out of the corner of his eye that reminded him that he had tripped over something that had caused his little blackout. Shifting his gaze to the ground at his feet, he found something that he did not expect.

Lying, sprawled out, was a body. A man with cornflower blue hair, that reached their mid back, and covered in mud and bruises looking a little worse for wear. Not that he minded the other people of the Rukongai but they were usually weak and this man was by no means weak by any sense of the word. His spiritual pressure, something Unohana had been training him to sense during their training as she would frequently blindfold him, was immense. The person before him was special, that Ichigo knew for sure.

However he had more concerning things to think about as he felt his demise approaching his current location. A pillar of blood red reiatsu headed for him with killing intent so strong Ichigo saw the man at his feet stir momentarily. The only words that could come to the poor soul's mind at the moment were…

"Oh fuck me."

Yachiru Unohana

Unohana leaned over the railing on the porch of her and Ichigo's new home, staring out into the rainy night. It had been a little over an hour after her student had left to wander when the rain started to fall. He was pushing himself and she was proud of that but he hadn't been able to activate his shikai since their first official fight.

It seemed odd to her that his zanpakuto would allow him to access that power once and then not again in a year. Something about the whole situation bothered her and there were still a great many variables that she was left in the dark about. None of which she liked.

Letting out a reluctant sigh, she shifted her gaze into the direction of her student. He had wandered pretty far but she knew that he wouldn't go too far but him being out there still left her uncomfortable. There were plenty of people that she knew he couldn't handle, herself included but that was another story.

Turning to lay down for a moment, she made sure to leave a kido up that would let her know when he arrived so that she could greet him upon his return.

Wiping the sleep from her eyes as she rose to her feet. Unohana looked around the room and spread her senses around the area in an attempt to either spot or sense her charge. It was to her surprise that Ichigo was nowhere to be found. He just simply wasn't there. That's when she started to get upset. The boy had allowed her to wake on her own by staying out late. He knew the rules and he would pay for not abiding by those rules.

Without a second thought, Unohana burst into shunpo and sped towards the location, around 10 km away, of his weakened reiatsu. The fact that he was weakened either meant he had gotten himself into a fight he couldn't win or that he had another blackout. Neither option was good and both would give her more than enough reason to pound his face into the ground.

As she approached Ichigo's location, she could feel his fear and she reveled in it. She could practically taste his blood as it ran cold and she wouldn't stop to give him time to contemplate why she was there or what was happening. She was just going to strike and let him deal with figuring out how to respond. If the response was poor, well, he was in for a world of pain.

Flashing onto the scene, she was in his face for a microsecond before a splash of blood painting her blade, bringing a bloodchilling smile to her face. First blood, he was instantly on the defensive as he tried to stammer out some kind of excuse but she didn't care what he had to say. Nothing but the ringing of blades would allow him time to survive her onslaught.

She slashed as he parried as both of the combatants settled into a dance of death that had been rehearsed for almost a year. It was a sultry dance that was the product of training that brought Ichigo to the brink of death on many occasions. She even noticed him getting sucked into the repetitiveness of the dance. He was getting complacent and he would suffer for his relaxed posture and his pride would feel her wrath.

In the stead of their standard next moves, Unohana flashed behind the momentarily stunned Ichigo before he had time to react. His back exploded with crimson as she felt her blade reopen many old scars that were close to healing. Organs cried out in agony as Unohana basked in the inhuman cries of pain that erupted from Ichigo's throat.

"Trap them in your vortex..." She couldn't make out the rest of the sentence as she was blasted with a torrent of water and slammed forcefully into a tree. The tree falling to the ground and shattering with a resounding crash, she could only look in confusion at the blue haired man that stood over Ichigo defensively.

In her confusion and surprise she spoke her mind before getting into a stance that she had used to slaughter thousands.

"Who the fuck are you?" Now it was personal.

Thank you for reading to the end. Please comment to let me know what you liked or disliked and about any errors that need to be corrected. It only helps me write better and bring you a better story. Again asking if anyone is willing to Beta this story and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your days. :)