It's been four months since his supposed death and Yoriichi Tsugikuni still didn't know how he was still alive.

Last he remembered, he was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be an old man, well over the age of eighty (which was a lot higher than the average lifespan at the time). He was supposed to be in a field at the dead of night, dead as nails after throwing one last attack at his demonified brother.

He had lived his life to its fullest. He had given humanity their best weapon against the crawlers of the night and was ready to join his Uta in the afterlife.

But then when he wakes up after that night, he finds himself lying on the middle of a path leading to a large palace on a floating island somewhere up in the sky. What's more, it appeared that he had magically become younger, back to when he was in his prime (at around twenty years of age). That and the weird markings on his arms that he didn't remember being there before.

Almost immediately after finding out that he was actually somehow alive, he almost gets himself killed again by some very skinny guy who looked to be dangerously low on some pretty important vitamins with a weird-looking katana that could supposedly "kill anything and anyone with a single cut."

Yoriichi was a demon slayer long enough to know that it might not be as bullshit as it sounded. Still though, he made sure not to get hit at all.

Four months later, he finds himself part of this Squad Zero group, tasked with protecting the Soul King, which actually was a sentient (somehow) body without arms and legs floating around in a barrier of some kind. A squad that was part of a larger society called the Soul Society which was tasked with protecting humanity from these "Hollows."

He found that his role in this place wasn't too different from his role back where he came from. Even if there were several dozen new terms that he had to learn like reiatsu, zanpakuto, shikai, bankai, etc. After apologizing for trying to kill him more than a couple of times, the demon spring guy (Yoriichi keeps forgetting his name) offers to teach him about how things worked around in this place.

The terms never stick. No matter how many times he is taught them, he can never remember everything. He feels that he remembers enough though.

When the Soul King accepted him into the Squad Zero (for reasons he still didn't quite know), the lanky katana creator guy and the demon spring guy seemed to accept him almost immediately. The fat chef lady also did, but based on her personality, Yoriichi guessed that she just wanted more people to cook for.

As for the last two members however…

The puppet lady didn't even bother to try hiding the fact that she disliked the slayer. She was very upfront about the fact that she found him highly suspicious.

Maybe it was because of the passive facial expression he always had on him. The demon spring guy did tell him it was unnerving how hard it was to read him due to that. Yeah, maybe that was it. It couldn't possibly be that he was a stranger who appeared right out of thin air and somehow got himself a position in her squad, could it?

The monk though, his captain, was a bit more subtle about it. The monk (Hyosube Ichibei is his name), and technically his captain, was an outwardly cheerful man, but not quite in the same way as the demon spring guy or the katana creator guy. Despite that though, Yoriichi could tell that his captain was wary of him as well.

As diverse as they may be though, there was one thing they all had in common. They were all pretty powerful in terms of combat power.

The demon spring guy could summon water so hot that it would literally melt his opponents. The puppet lady had a squadron of royal guards at her disposal and was endlessly skilled at sewing, so skilled that she somehow turned it into a fighting style (personally, Yoriichi still thought Uta was better, but tjhat was cuz of personal bias and he wasn't going to that to a lady who literally uses lethal sewing to fight), The katana creator guy could create zanpakuto of any kind and the the chef lady could create a basically impenetrable cage out of her own reiatsu. The monk though was, by far, the most powerful of them all. His ability to change and erase names easily made him the most formidable of them.

But still, not even the captain was a match for Yoriichi. Despite the monk's ability to take away and change names, none of that mattered if he couldn't hit him. The Breath of the Sun was still superior.

Since he was literally living in a castle above the clouds, he had asked his captain numerous times if he could go down to Earth and find out what it was like now. No matter how many times he asked though, Ichibei said no. It was the royal guards' task to guard the Soul King and even one day not on the job could possibly prove fatal. Squad Zero only went down to Earth in urgent situations or if commanded to do so by the King.

"Hey, Yoriicheerio!" the slayer hears someone call from behind his bedroom door, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Rise and shine, my dude! It's breakfast time!"

"Katana creator, I told you many times already not to call me that," Yoriichi blandly says as he gathers his burgundy red hair in a ponytail, dons his usual garments, straps his katana to his hip and opens the door from his room to reveal the lanky zanpakuto creator standing behind it.

"I will once ya quit callin' me katana master," the lanky man says. "We're bros now! Just call me Nimaiya, ya hear?"

"I apologize, Nimaiya-san," Yoriichi says with an apologetic bow, knowing he's probably going to forget that name by the next day.

"Bruh, still with the formalities?" Nimaiya says, folding his arms across his chest. "Didn't I just say we were- you know what, nevermind. Just don't be late for breakfast. Wouldn't wanna make Hikifune mad."

Yoriichi just nods. Knowing her, he couldn't quite imagine the fat chef lady angry, but it being late to breakfast was rude and he wasn't a rude person.

As he follows Nimaiya to the cafeteria, Yoriichi tunes out the zanpakuto creator's endless ranting to, for the millionth time since he got here, ponder how things turned out the way they did.