Look, I wish to apologize with something like "I was busy doing my work" but I woul be lying. In fact, right now, I should be working in what I'm supposed to be working..I dunno... anyway, here am I, writing for a fic that gets no love XD. More exposition...I wonder when will the plot come back from the war? Hopefully next chapter XD. Thanks for reading.

Ashes

Long ago, when Ichigo was a kid, he was afraid of the afterlife. As far as he knew, there wasn't hell, or heaven, just emptiness. The only world he knew was the one were ghosts and humans existed. Years later, after he knew there was, indeed, a place to go after the death, Ichigo felt something akin to relief. Soul Society wasn't paradise, but in a sense, it was still something beyond death.

In the magic Ninja world, Ichigo fear of death assaulted him again.

He was on a mission to rid a forest of bandits when he saw a woman on the path. The body wasn't cold yet and Killer B was eager to find the culprit, but Ichigo didn't follow the ninja, instead, he just stared at a skin as pale as ashes and at the blank stare without any fire of life. He wondered, for the first time since meeting Rukia, where did people go after diying.

In a distant place, another being was asking himself the same as he monitored a desauciad man.

Sosuke Aizen knew time wasn't on his favor, that he should had been focusing in dimensional research, but as the soul of his patient left the body, the soul reaper tried with all his might to figure where the spirit went. He even did a tracking kido but once the man died, it was useless. Aizen first theory was that souls didn't part to any Soul Society and neither could they keep form on the real world, hence why the tracking kido was useless, second theory was that souls were very different on the magical ninja world and so any other kido would be completely useless for that particular research.

The soul reaper discarded the idea inmediatly, if souls were that different then gigais wouldn't work as good as they did.

He needed to do more tests about it, the research would be useful without a doubt and..

"Don't" Orihime spoke softly from the other side of the bed of the patient. She looked at Aizen as if she knew that he was thinking about doing something that had barely any relevance to going back. She was quite the perceptive girl.

"Don't what? Miss Inoue" he asnwered with a smirk, she had grow up since Hueco Mundo, but not enough to think she could outplay him.

"You look as if you wanted to stray away from the "back to home" project..like last week that we spend all the afternoons reading about how ninja sandals were made, it was funny. I mean, I thought their sandals were magical and it would be awesome to take magic sandals to Karakura, I would be Spiderman! I mean, Spiderwoman"

"Yes, you would" Aizen could understand that. Perhaps Orihime wasn't the smartest sharp in the box, but he found in her an akin soul that saw the clouds as the fishes of the sky. She was a dreamer even in the chaotic world they lived, and she still knew to keep her feets on the ground. Like Aizen her mind went to sidetracks fastly, but unlike him she had not the knowledge or curiosity to tear everything apart.

As she began to fill the notes, Aizen went to inform the man's family about what happened. The man's family was only a teen with freckles and big teeth. The girl had arrived fastly, in the same smoke screen that all the ninjas did even though she wasn't on duty and obviously didn't want anyone to know she was a ninja.

She was dressed as a civilian (not even a chainmail underneath) and without her headband, but Aizen had already figured out the soft steps of the ninjas and their fails to mimic the civilians long ago. Like their hands, even henge couldn't hide every scar. He saw them perfectly without using any of his powers, probably with more clarity that they themselves did.

Aizen wasn't a good man, he had even killed Gin, a young man that had been his student because he feel like doing it. He, of course, could defend all his actions with retoric, saying something like "he killed me first, by killing him I acknowledged his intent", but he was smart enough to know that he did things to suit his own tastes.

The ninja girl cried once the news were delivered and Aizen did as was expected from him. Being a perfect doctor that understands others pain. It was as much as an act as his ruling in Hueco Mundo had been. A sort of honestity with a lot of deceive.

He wondered briefly if the girl was acting too, and once again in the day, rejected his hypothesis almost at the same time he thought it. The girl was a mess, trained to kill but with a psyche as frail ash.

If Aizen were a ninja, he would have long ago set his mind to destroy the village system. It wasn't even a hundred years old and it would probably change with just single village that didn't use childen as soldiers.

Aizen had seen all those kids, from Naruto to Kakashi. Weak and prone to sentiment. They were broken in twisted ways that were only possible if the breaking began even before they outgrew their diapers. It was so twisted and cruel that made Soul Society almost look good.

Almost. Afterlife, unlike the real world, could be made a sort of heaven with relative easiness, but the things that controlled all never did anything to improve the world without any real problem, so Soul Society was still worst.

That didn't mean the idea of a revolution wasn't strong, instead, as Sosuke went to another patient's bed, he was already thinking about how. He hadn't write a book in a long time, and thanks to Naruto's rocks from the temples outside he had time to spare, only downfall is that he would leave out his anthropology research on "why ninjas run with their hands behind their backs"

In another place of the same village, Uryu Ishida tried again to purify a house in the Uchiha's compound. The last Uchiha watching from outside the house gate. The boy was tyring to keep a serene face even if Uryu couldn't figure out what tied the last spiritual particles of the victims to the place.

It was almost as if the whole land was the casket of their corpses and they were trapped inside.

Uryu cringed at the idea. He had asked Sasuke where were the bodies buried, but the boy admitted he didn't knew. They had given him only the ashes of his parents, and he didn't care about the others.

The Quincy didn't ask why the lack of care, it would had been insensitive and rude, so instead, he went to work and did as many purifier rituals as he knew.

Suddenly he felt a tug, coming from below the ground, it was symilar to hollow in how wrong it felt. Uryu knelt and touched the wooden floor to sense it better. He saw something red and black dots in his mind eye, but as sudden as the vision came it was gone.

"I will try another thing tomorrow" he said to the boy.

"Are you sure it will work? If there are spirits, I want them gone before next mission"

Uryu nodded in understanding but his words were "We will see", he wanted Sasuke to not give up, after all, last mission outside the village had gone slightly wrong as far as Uryu could infer. Sasuke Uchiha hadn't said what happened, just a small grunt about a lying carpenter. Uryu thought it had something to do with death.

Death always made people change. It was a mark point of before and after.

As he bid Sasuke farewell, Uryu looked at the place, he had heard the Uchihas were proficient in jutsus of fire, so he could almost feel fit that whenever he put a foot in their graveyard, he could feel something that tasted as ashes in his mouth.