Ichigo Kurosaki sometimes thought about how, when sleeping, humans were completely defenseless.
He remembered cumming inside Samui and falling sleep, out of exhaustion.
He didn't remember his dreams, but he remembered the twists and turns of the ship, but only realized the ship was being destroyed when he heard the sound of the roar of a reptile and the water hitting his mouth.
Using his reishi, Ichigo jumped from the surface of the water to the air but was stabbed in the dark for something he didn't know what it was, but whose author was soon revealed.
"Oh, you were like a whale escaping from captivity...Sadly I'm the sad truth that in the nature even whales are hunted. And I can see in the dark...like a bat".
Ichigo felt like falling for a second, but then a punch on the side of his head sent him flying for long minutes where his hands moved towards where he last heard the voice, grabbing on the hope she was still there and maybe, if she was his daughter Kana, he could convince her to stop fighting against him.
But then he slowly fell, and finally his head hit the side of something solid but still very high. Falling over the ground, Ichigo felt like he had landed on a small mountain.
Coughing water, he fell asleep once again but, a conscience faded, he heard tremors.
He could sense that another universe had been fused to this one.
When Ichigo opened his eyes in the following morning, he thought he was hallucinating.
The Empire State Building was visible to him. The famous building in New York. Also, there were was a plane impaling the building structure.
Ichigo realized he was at the border of a cliff and looked below. Water had flooded the surface, and Ichigo could see clearly several weird creatures looking towards the building, like someone watching a building in flames. They were apprehensive
Ichigo made an effort to stand on his two feet, despite the somnolence. Realizing what he should do, he began to jump towards the building, walking through a devastated landscape that seemed to be a mix of the Land if Lightning wand early 2000s New York.
He could hear the screams of humans begging for help, but he knew that whatever was strong enough to to throw a plane into the building was going to endanger more lives.
Then he began to hear grunts of two men fighting. Following that sound, he soon found a crater and his shock was incommensurable seeing who was fighting who.
First, there was an european-looking man with white beard and white hair, seemingly in his 60s but incredibly muscular. He seemed to be struggling but, what more impressed Ichigo was the head of statue to his left side, a giant stone head of the man himself. The man emitted lightning from his body like it was sweat.
From the other, was a known face, but one that Ichigo thought he never would see again. That was clearly, absolutely Azrael. But not completely Azrael. Half of his body was metallic, down to his hand and face.
Both men were grappling with each other, but nobody seemed superior to other.
"So this is the power of a god. No, the power of the supreme god of Olympus? You're a small fry. Nice lightning but that thing can't even scratch me. Honestly, the difference between you and Tager is that you can make rain fall."
"Your importunate human brat. I don't know what kind of God is your father or mother, but I will not hesitate to fight him at once for creating a problem like you!"
"God, hahaha! Well, honestly, I may not be completely human even before we get to this metal parts, but if you think you will survive to seek whoever created me in the way I am you're a first class comedian! You're gonna make everybody in Hell laugh!"
Between the two guys, Ichigo hadn't no problem deciding: he clearly was going to kill Azrael. Ichigo quickly transformed in his Getsuga form but, before he could swing his sword at the distracted Azrael, a giant metal blade came downwards to cut his arm.
"AAAAAAAhhhhh!"
Azrael and the white-haired individual ceased their contest of strength to look towards the place where Ichigo was screaming, blood coming out of the remains of his arm like a fountain.
A cruel smile came from the blue-haired girl's face, the hand that moved the blade.
"You can't really sense me, eh, Kurosaki? Maybe because I'm a ghost!"
"You, you... Kana..."
"Oh, you think I'm your daughter with the succubus? Hum, well, the truth is...Oh, why I should give you the satisfaction of an answer?"
Ichigo knew he was about do die. The probabilities were very high. He tried to grab his zanpaktou with his remaining hand but his movments were too slow, and he felt like about to collapse. not that it would matter, since the blue-haired ninja raised her giant silver blade again, most likely to cut him him in diagonal beginning by his head this time.
Ichigo's consciousness was quickly fading because of the blood spilling from his wound. He closed his eyes to at least rest before dying, even if for a second.
Was then that Ichigo heard the sound of lightning, and the screams of both a female and a old male, and the male seemed to be puking blood.
"Hermes, the boy".
Ichigo opened and then quickly closed his eyes.
The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was a confused and saddened face of a men wearing a helmet with wings.
For the second time in less of a week, Ichigo woke up feeling injured.
When he did, he felt a weird smell in the air. It smelled like...forest.
And he could clearly hear a lot of voices around. Some were coming from outside the building he was in. Others, more distant, were from the outside.
In the moment Ichigo was paying attention the adult individuals who were in the same building with him.
"This place is in no way safe. What we're fighting aren't monsters, they are not archetypes, they aren't even demigods! It's an entirely different class Hermes! They're humans!"
"There's no way Azrael is a human. Humans can't fight gods".
"It's not Azrael who will follow you to this place. There's TV, you know. Apparently we have fused to another universe, and we're not even the first. In fact, we may be the fourth or fifth. I don't know how the existence of them was occulted to us".
"Hum, I thought Azrael was a foreign demigod. His name is jewish".
"I don't like to talk about metaphysics... Wait, the girl with him had wings, right?"
"Yes, she had white wings, but I thought humans have this image of angels because of Eros."
"She may be an hybrid. An nephilim. In that case...Urgh, he may be coming back. The son of the unnamed".
"They don't want to terminate us Dionysus. They never attacked us".
"Have you ever read the Bible? God almost terminated the hebrews in a fit of rage before Moses convinced him to spare them. He's notoriously unstable. May be because he's the god of everything at the same time. The cosmos is chaotic, and so is he. "
Ichigo was tired of hearing speculation that was going in the wrong direction, so yelled at once.
"God and Jesus have nothing to do with these people!"
Ichigo realized he yelled too loud, because he heard people from the outside stopping doing what they were doing and entering through doors.
Soon there were five people surrounding his bed, two adults men and three teenagers, one boy and two girls. And there was also a centaur behind them.
The blonde girl with curly hair was the first to talk.
"Hum, he is japanese? I never heard of a japanese demigod before. Aren't the gods based on the United States?"
The man in a Hawaiian shirt, that Ichigo presumed it was the one who was talking with his rescuer, clarified things for the teenage girl.
"He isn't a demigod Annabeth. But your grandpa sacrificed his life saving him from the winged woman. I think he saw something on him. Tell me, now that you're awake, who are you, what you were doing there?"
"Ahn, well, I was going to kill Azrael."
The muscular teenage girl to the right of Annabelle began to laugh scandalously.
"You? Killing Azrael, a creature who was able to grapple with the king of the Gods? Your arm was cut off by his sidekick!"
"You don't know nothing about Azrael except his name and what did in the last 48 hours, I bet. Who said she was his sidekick?"
The girl shut her mouth, and looking at Ichigo's eyes, she saw the eyes of an experienced warrior, way more than her.
The teenage boy with black hair, the only tenager who hadn't spoken ye, finally talked.
"So, who was she? I mean, if she is a bigger problem than Azrael, we need to find a way of defeating her. And we need all help possible. Even if it's only one arm."
Ichigo turned to where his left arm was, but found only air and bandages covering what remained of it.
He got sad for a moment, until he remembered Orihime could cure it.
"I know someone who can cure a limb, even in this state".
"Is she a goddess?" said Annabeth in a jovial tone.
"You know, not everything that is supernatural is a god or a demigod. Some people are just born with special gifts." said Ichigo, before remembering shinigami means "death god".
"Yeah, I heard about Medea before"
The girl seemed to be slightly disappointed. Ichigo rolled his eyes,
"So, you're gonna help us?" asked the boy with black hair again.
"Well, if you..."
Ichigo stopped for a moment. Why he was underestimating teenagers again? He was a teenager when he became a shinigami. He still looked like one.
"Ok" said Ichigo, shaking the hand of the black-haired boy. "What is your name?"
"Percy Jackson".
Nothing special happened because of that handshake.