in the eyes
Uryu entered the house and had to force his face to remain unfazed by what he saw.
There was a blonde boy dressed in an orange jumpsuit practicing calligraphy in the living room. Aizen was sat behind him looking pleased about the whole thing.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Ishida. I present you Naruto Uzumaki, as you can see, he is quite busy to introduce himself" Aizen said almost beaming.
The quincy knew the man was manipulative and a good actor, but he was still surprised by how genuine he seemed to be. But as his forced formality using "Mr" and "Miss", Uryu could perceive the facade, a monster disguised as a sheep. Or perhaps the sheep that was forced to become a monster (according to Ichigo, Aizen's loniless made him go crazy).
Uryu didn't muse on that, instead he decided to watch the unknown kid again. He had marks, like whiskers, on his cheeks, a round face and blue eyes. But there was something odd on his riatsu, the spiritual energy felt tainted. He adjusted his glasses but was unable to discern why the kid was surrounded with something that just felt wrong.
Much more wrong that hollow energy, human after all. So much unlike what the boy had.
"What are you looking at, four eyes!" Naruto almost snarled as he looked at Uryu and then raised a fist "Any problem?"
"Come on, Naruto. Uryu, I mean, Mr. Ishida didn't mean to be rude"
The quincy almost cringed by how Aizen addressed him. There should be a big wall of all kinds between the traitor and himself, instead the man was living under the same roof.
"I have to go!" He said before going outside. He was not going to stay around the strange kid with perverse riatsu and Aizen, the latter was a monster of all sorts.
He gritted his teeth before closing the door and as he finished to turn the handle, he felt someone watching him. His icy eyes searched for the person. He couldn't see him but his riatsu sensing did.
A ninja.
He walked to meet Orihime, noticing that the ninja didn't follow him. So..Who was the ninja tailing?
"You really have talent for this" Aizen said after picking up all the calligraphy material "As you are a ninja, I expected a really good pulse, but you have much more. Innate affinity perhaps"
Naruto beamed at Aizen words. He had just wrote his name over and over, trying to make it as clean as possible, but somehow the foreigner found him amazing. It almost made him forget the laughs of his classmates or Iruka-sensei disappointed face. Or the four glasses boy that stared at him as if he was a monster.
"Is everything alright, Naruto?" Aizen asked as he closed his vault.
Naruto crossed his arms before answering with a loud "Yes!"
"Uzumaki is an interesting last name" the man said as he looked at one of the papers "Where does it comes from"
Naruto felt his eyes widen.
The Third Hokage had never told him anything more than the fact that his parents were ninjas. When he had been eigth, Naruto had wondered if he was even human. He imagined a kind mother and a brave father in a distant past. But, there was a nagging doubt in his mind. He had been born the same day than the Kyube attack, perhaps Naruto was the Fox itself. His last name just a fabrication and his skin false over his bones.
He hadn't think about that in years, but after Aizen remark he felt a shiver on his spine. He gulped before regaining his wits.
"Yep, the best last name ever, don't you think is pretty cool?" He gave the man his widest smile and put his hands behind his head.
"You have a really good name. It's a unique, so it should have meant a lot for those that gave them to you"
There was a hand over his head, human, kind, warm. And Naruto didn't knew what to do except stare at Aizen brown eyes, at first they looked so pure and open, like windows to a soul.
But then Naruto saw it. He was not sure of what, but he knew there was something in Aizen's soul that was both scary and familiar.
The weight over his head dropped and Naruto found himself following Aizen's hand.
"It's time to go"
"Wait" Naruto almost screamed to stop Aizen march towards the door.
"Your final exam is in a week, isn't it?" The man opened the door and motioned Naruto to leave "I believe you would do fine"
"Yes, I wil, believe it! Naruto said believing every word.
...
Uryu knew that the Naruto boy didn't mean good business. He had tried to get an answer of why Aizen invited him or took his time to teach the kid anything, but the shinigami had just said he found the boy amusing.
Orihime's theory was that Aizen was secretly the type of guy that loved to teach and was genuinely fond on Naruto. Grimmjow idea was that the kid formed a part of another convulted plan that only Aizen knew.
Whatever the case was, it had gone wrong.
Just two days after meeting Naruto, ninjas had arrived to their front door and began to search all over the place and had took Uryu and everyone else to an underground base without windows and he was forced to share cell with Grimmjow.
He didn't know why, but Uryu was certain the kid had something to do with the ninjas raid.
"This place is boring!" Grimmjow crockled his fists as he spat the words "What do you say, four eyes?"
"Aizen told you to stay put" Uryu answered coldly, a little offended by the hollow 'nickname'.
Before Grimmjow could get mad a riatsu approached the cell and both men could see a white haired ninja standing outside, one black eye visible and the other hid under his headband.
"Isn't Aizen your sensei? " The man asked with a mocking smile.
"He is a good doctor" Uryu voice was even and his hand played briefly with his quincy cross. For some reason the ninjas had not searched them trought, probably because they had nothing against Uryu and the rest.
"Where do you say you are from?"
"A very far away place called Karakura. It's not in the maps and we are probably the only survivors" Uryu could barely hide his pain after saying those words. Ywach had probably destroyed everything already.
"Oh, I see" the ninja cheery tone was cruel, but the quincy expected that from a man that had as work murder and deceive "I need to talk with Blue here, so you stay put, Mr. Four eyes"
It was a nice round office, painted with nice green and pink colors, in the middle a man sat in his desk and looked at Orihime with the eyes of a grandfather.
The girl was confused so she decided to not move from the chair and be as quiet as possible.
"I'm the Third Hokage" the man finally introduced himself and Orihime eyes widened. She knew that the kages were the higher ups and the strongest ninjas with amazing feats under their belts. The man wasn't Yamamoto but he was strong "Your name is Orihime Inoue, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir!"
"I have noticed that your teacher, the doctor Aizen, has took a linking with a young boy from this village"
"Naruto?" Orihime cocked her head, she had seen the boy a few times, bouncing happily near Aizen, and the soul reaper had seem happy too. Perhaps. It was strange that the interrogation was because that little boy.
She scowled. She had in fact heard the name of Naruto before, whispered as if it was cursed, and she had noticed that almost every person trowed the boy dirty looks. Even their neighbor had asked her to never let 'Him' near the block again. But the man had moved away after it was discovered he was in a drug ring, so she had not bothered to think about that.
"Yes, you see, Naruto seems quite attached to the doctor. I just want to know, what does Aizen plan?"
She was taken back by the blunt question and the sadness on the old man eyes. She was uncertain of what to say. She closed her eyes and tried to figure out the almost picturesque image of Naruto and Aizen walking together.
"Naruto seems lonely" she said finally, her eyes downcasted "I think, I think that Aizen doesn't plan anything"
"You don't seem to trust him" the man said as he touched his white goatee.
Orihime smiled. That wasn't right. She trusted Aizen a lot. Her faith that he could make the portals to return home was the only thing that keep her for dreaming in a void world where Tatsuki, Rukia and every other of her friends was no more.
The man was crazy, but she knew that he wouldn't jeopardize his work for something as simple as to mess with an unknown kid. Naruto was in the shinigami plan as any other act of perfect citizen Aizen.
"What are you planning to do with us, sir?" She asked softly.
"Nothing. I just will give you a warning. Stay away from Naruto"
...
"So, that's what happened" Aizen said in a low voice, everyone on the living room stayed quiet. "It was about Naruto, it's certainly unexpected"
"The boy is creepy. Why did you bring him here?"
"Look out your tone, Grimmjow, you are useful, but not that much. Now, this briefing has been interesting, but I have more urgent matters to attend"
..
Sosuke looked at his machine again, it was supposed to capture wavelengths of the riatsu from the Sun flares. After all, he needed to find the right way to make the Sun's energy the source to form the dimensional rift.
But it wasn't working.
He had gone over the design twice, trying to figure out what was wrong. Perhaps he needed different materials that the one back in his world. The crystal he had created wasn't working. Or perhaps he had misacalcullated the range...Or...
He sometimes wished to be like Urahara or Mayuri. Somehow both of them could pull out artifacts out of nothing, with such easiness that made Aizen cringe. Putting something in a soul to hide it? Aizen had tried to do that so he could try to figure out the reverse mechanism, but his tries had been null.
Then there was Mayuri, making all his body of a special goo that could gather again in the laboratory of Central 12. The most Aizen accomplishEd was improving Szayazel experiment on Metischa, so the Hollow could return even from Soul Society.
To offend him more, Urahara had discovered the mechanism of the Garganta (the hollow way to create rifts between dimension) in a month. Aizen had worked on that years.
He liked to think that it was because Urahara and Mayuri had privileged information and almost never worked from the scratch. Unlike he, who had at most access to innacurate data about the hollow souls and knew of the Royal Guard about five paragraphs in an old book that dated even before he was born.
But, at the end, Sosuke decided that their science lacked sense. It would be materially impossible to do what they did in such a short time. Didn't they need to wait for the reactives to act? Even he couldn't make the sun to raise sooner (unless it was the false one in Hueco Mundo). But he had the idea that Mayuri and Urahara would... because...That was how things worked for them.
Aizen had to work hard for everything, to dirty his hands in ink and make a lot of field researches. He knew being bitter of struggling was below him, but nothing was working on his favor.
He had to be civil with the humans. Orihime was a warming creature, but he hated that she didn't hate him. Uryu at least behaved as expected but was very icy.
Then, there were the ninjas. The Hyuga had died and his body barely did anything to solve the mistery of how he could see them in spiritual form. It wasn't just chakra control and Aizen was sure it had to do with his white eyes, but before deciding to observe another Huyga he needed to make advancements in his machines.
At least, on the bright side of faking to care about people, Naruto had been amusing. A boy that everyone hated for some unknown reason, he would have searched it but he didn't wanted to dwell in the Ninja world or its political affairs. Naruto could be the bastard of a well liked person or the kid of a traitor, but he didn't deserve the hate.
Or being brainshawed to be a ninja at such young age...The world should be different. But it wasn't Aizen's fight.
He had one already, in Soul Society. Against everyone. The Ninja world could manage itself, it wasn't like the world of the Death were a powerful being could in fact make everything better by providing clean water to every corner of Rokungai and with a proficient ingenery could help families to reunite.
Making a better world wasn't impossible because lack of resources. It was done because when people weren't fighting over water then they would ask the shinigami to help them to get rid of those that controlled the after life for centuries.
The overlord that kidnapped kids or the one that forced every women to serve him. Shinigami turned blind eyes on it because money was as important in the afterlife as in the human one.
Aizen knew he wasn't the only one that knew how twisted the world was, but regretfully he was the only one with enough strength, smarts, and will to do anything. He could do more that those febles souls that were just food to lesser hollows, and unlike Urahara that enjoyed idle life, Aizen was willing to try and change it.
He looked at his machine and noticed it was burning.
"Perfect"
...
It was a full moon night with cold air. Like a bad omen, the moon was painted in a bright red.
Ichigo, Chad and Killer B were traveling to recollect some weapons in a nearby city. As it was night they were camping a few kilometers away from the road.
Just a few days before, Ichigo had been gifted a slender katana and he felt almost at ease with the weight of the sword on his hip. Using it had been natural, even if the katana didn't held his soul.
But somehow Ichigo got the feeling that something was wrong. He enhanced his senses until he felt a riatsu not that far away.
"Where are ya going?" Killer B asked loudly.
"To piss" Ichigo said without turning and almost jogged towards the energy.
He arrived to a lake, and in the middle of it a young man sat on a rock. The stranger had a black coat with red flowers and Ichigo could recognize a Konoha headband.
The man raised himself up and turned to face Ichigo with his red eyes.
to be continued.
..
not lolscience for Aizen, well...Not that much.
Sorry for the people that like this fic enough to read it, but I had a bussy schedule. In a lot of ways I'm writing this fic to know if Naruto can talk no jutsu Aizen and have vs battles.
Until next time.