Naruto stretched his limbs and left the hospital with only a damaged pride. Being the host for the kyuubi had its advantages. He slunk past the green haired swordsman who was arguing with some blond visitor with a swirly eyebrow, and past the redhead swordsman who was talking to some little kid.

What had been early morning was now late afternoon. How long had he been in that hospital? The memories of the crushing defeat began to flood back in as he walked to the food court.

He had lost.

He, Uzumaki Naruto, title character of Naruto, lost.

It wasn't fair! All his life he had trained and trained and managed to claw his way to the top and all he got for it was his ass whooped in less than a second. He blamed Kishimoto-sama. Why couldn't that good for nothing mangaka made him stronger? He made a three year time skip and all he learned was that blue and orange clashed horribly!

"Uzumaki-chan!!!" Came the familiar voice of Kakuzu.

Naruto grimaced when he saw the slightly comical appearance of Kakuzu running.

"Found you! Listen about the battle you bet on…" Kakuzu said hurriedly. He had alto of people to threate-…errr….warn…about the wages they had bet so he needed to make this quick.

Naruto brightened momentarily. "yeah?" The only reason Kakuzu would confront him would be if he had bet right and won money. If he had lost, then no need to find him right?

"You bet on Dumbledore, and I am sorry to inform you that Gandalf won. With a twenty percent increase…you owe us approximately…"

"Wait. WHAT?!?!" Naruto screeched. He had not just heard that. "I already bet Tebayo!!! I don't need to give you money!!! That's not how it works!!"

Kakuzu shrug. "Sorry, Nami-sans' rules. If you win, you get your money back and a twenty to forty percent increase, the same when you lose. It's only fair that way."

"I don't have that kind of money Tebayo!"

"Chill Kyuubi-chan, it's only a twenty percent increase. The odds for Dumbledore winning were really low anyway, so you should be happy it's only that much."

Naruto turned red with anger. "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT EARLIER DATTEBAYO?!?!?!"

Kakuzu shrunk back slightly. "I assumed you knew. You would have to be a complete dunderhead to not know…"

Naruto sighed sadly. He was a complete dunderhead. A complete dunderhead who lost. To a strawberry samurai. With orange hair. And a really pointy chin. How could he have lost to such a loser anyway? He had defeated…

Well he had defeated…

Neji and Kiba, but that really didn't count, not anymore really.

Gaara! He had defeated Gaara! Yeah Gaara…

He had defeated Kakuzu! Even if it had been seven against one…

He had….uhhh…defeated…uhhhhh….

No one. He, the great Naruto Uzumaki hadn't defeated ANYONE worthwhile since Gaara. And that had been pre shippuden, heck that was pre Tsunade! And Pre Itachi!

The only big battle he had was Him verses Sasuke and he had LOST!

Damn he sucked.

With this new epiphany at hand, Naruto realized it was high time to scarf down some ramen because ramen made everything feel better.

One kage bunshin later and he had managed to ditch Kakuzu, and head for the ramen stand.

However, no ramen could beat Ichirakus, and he found that it just wasn't right.

"Stupid crappy ramen." He muttered between slurps. It was horrible to believe he would have to pay for this. Maybe he wouldn't pay for it. He was Naruto Uzumaki after all. He could just go Kyuubi on anyones' ass who thought to cross him. Unlike his story counterpart, Naruto suffered no nonsensical side effects like 'shortened life span' since he was practically immortal. Which meant the RasenShuriken was always a possibility…

Or maybe he could try out his kick ass toad sage powers. Or just use kage bunshin for old times' sake.

As long as that loser Ichigo didn't show up. It aggravated him, how he could have lost in half a second. Naturally, as a ninja he was fast and he was of course related to THE yellow flash (oh don't act so surprised, a monkey could figure it out), so to say there was someone that much faster than him was just illogical. Dattebayo.

"ha-ha, wow, and I thought LUFFY was similar!"

Naruto whipped around to see who said the words. It was some weirdo man with a baseball cap and an orange jersey. Ok, this orange thing had to stop.

He grinned and made a peace sign at Naruto. "Yo!"

Naruto stood up, folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. "Do I know you 'Tebayo?"

"Oh you have no idea Uzumaki!" Baseball cap said with a chortle. "You have no idea!!" He was laughing now, as if he just heard some hysterical joke. But there was no joke. So clearly, he was just insane.

"You're not in my manga so how in the world am I supposed to know you 'Tebayo?" Naruto pointed out, trying to be as reasonable as possible. He had, after all, only met other manga characters yesterday.

"I'm not…oh god that's good!" The man seemed to be laughing himself into tears and nearly fell to the ground. However, he managed to regain his composure and smiled calmly at Naruto.

"You're one creepy old man ya know that?" Naruto said in response to such…theatrics…

Baseball Cap smiled and fished out some yen. "Here, let me pay for your meal, and in exchange, you take a walk with me."

If it wasn't for that fact that Naruto had almost no money left, and he would need that to fend off Kakuzu once he was found, Naruto would have said no.

But, he did indeed need that money, so he nodded, and reluctantly agreed.

Baseball Cap smiled widely; he put the yen on the table and motioned for Naruto to follow him. It was after a couple minutes of silence he finally spoke up.

"So Naruto, I heard you had your first fight against Kurosaki and lost?" The words came effortlessly, and the way he said it, you would have assumed he was talking about a game of checkers, or janken or something impossibly stupid like that.

"He cheated 'Tebayo! CHEATED!!! No way someone could win that fast!"

Baseball cap chuckled lightly. "Well, He's won most fights that way. Usually it's unscathed too. In fact, the only fight I think he lost his advantage with was with Yoh Asakura from Shaman King. And Yoh is a weakling anyway so-"

Naruto ignored him. The explanation was boring anyway. Unless he mentioned something like 'super secret weakness' or some sort of move that he could learn to defeat that strawberry moron, Naruto wasn't interested.

"-Course the problem with Ryuk was that all you had to do was throw an apple his way and he'd be good. Yagami did no better. He's only human and can only write so fast. And some of us here are either not human or already dead so that didn't even work. Not that any of us can die anyway…"

...Ichigo had to have a weakness. Maybe he was really stupid. Or maybe he had some sort of kryptonite. Like Cheese. Maybe cheese was his weakness…

"Let me tell you, yoyos are not as weak as you might think. I was surprised how far he made it, but he wasn't the main character so of course he could never have made it as far as he wanted…"

Maybe he was pervert. Like Ero-sennin. Maybe is sexy jutsu could take care of him. No, only lame sidekicks were designated as the perverts. No way would a main character ever be given such a horrible weakness.

"…someone you do not want to cross. Pity she was put in an American cartoon with American standards. Her bending abilities would have been so much better placed in a Japanese style manga. Then it could have gone on for a good half a decade or so…"

Maybe he could hunt him down while he was sleeping and shave his head… Then paint an obscene hand gesture on it with several American curse words. And a mustache. Mustaches were always good.

"…And trust me, never ever mention 'mudkip' around them, apparently it has some sort of hidden mean- ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?!?" Baseball Cap cried out indignantly and hit Naruto on the head.

"OWWW!!!" Naruto cried out. "Don't hit me again or I'll kick your ass Dattebayo!"

"Sure you will kid. Sure you will…" Baseball Cap scoffed. "Before or after you get your ass kicked by Sasuke again?"

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut UP!!!" Naruto screeched. "I am way more powerful then Sasuke-teme!!!"

"Really now? Funny, if I remember correctly, didn't he take down Deidara, whom you and Kakashi combined couldn't take down?"

Naruto was foaming at the mouth and looked extremely unstable at the moment. "Just who…the hell…do you think you are?" His voice was low and full of murderous intent. It was clear that one too many buttons had been pushed.

The man smiled slightly. He shrugged and made another peace sign. "Well, people round here call me Kugox."

xXx

Shikamaru stared at the computer. No way. No way could someone be that powerful. There was simply no way.

The internet, being the powerful source of information it was, had been Shikamarus first stop. First of all, personality wise, Ichigo was the perfect fighter. Impulsive but calculating, stubborn but selfless… his only real fault being that he tended to misread people's names and he fell into a depressive state when he lost because he let a friend down.

All in all, it was one of those cool people that Shikamaru had always despised. Like Sasuke, Neji, and slowly but surely, Naruto. He much preferred the not so cool people, like himself and Chouji.

Not to mention that guy managed to get crushed from many girls in the series. Yup, just like Sasuke.

That would have been enough to send him into a state of shock, until he discovered something much more horrifying. His powers and abilities. With top physical abilities in human and spiritual mode, he was stronger than the second strongest girl in all of Japan. He picked up new skills with amazing proficiency, and was able to learn an ability that took normal people hundreds of years to master in three days. And while the same instance happened to Naruto, unlike Naruto, he was not banned from using his new move. Or whatever Zanpakuto was.

Soon, Shikamaru discovered what made Ichigo so fast. It was called flash steps. Apparently, he was not too well versed in it, but showed amazing proficiency in it. That combined with his Zanpakuto, made him an expert swordsman. That explained all the deep cuts on Naruto.

Slowly, the truth sunk in. Naruto couldn't win. All this power Ichigo got was when he was in his spiritual body. This meant out of his normal body. And you had to be a shinigami in order to be able to tough his spiritual body. In order to defeat him, you would have to kill his normal body before he defeated you. This would take less than half a second. It seemed nearly impossible to Shikamaru.

If Ichigo went at normal speed this would all seem more possible, but it was that speed! And the fact that you could not do anything against him. As a spirit thing, he could attack both spirits and solid humans. It was all horribly unmatched. How anyone could defeat him seemed simply impossible, even to him. This wasn't NARUTO anymore. This was an entire universe with entirely different rules. Everything he learned had just gone down the drain.

He rubbed his temples in aggravation. There was no way he was going to subject himself to the torture of learning an entirely new universe. Not for Naruto. Not for Tema- ok. Maybe for Temari, but she wasn't here now was she?

He just hoped Naruto had just managed to stay out of trouble and hadn't done anything stupid.

xXx

"Kugox!!! I challenge you to a fight Dattebayo!"

To Be Continued

All information on Bleach was taken from the Bleach Wiki, if I said anything false about the Bleach universe; feel free to let me know since I am not familiar with the universe.