6 9 Pieces (1/2).
A white cocoon shaped object landed in a forest and broke apart. Ichigo was sitting crossed legged inside it with his eyes closed. He only twitched slightly, indicating that he was aware of his surroundings. He kept sitting with his eyes closed and started to spread his senses. It didn't take him long to discover that this new world was also rich in spiritual energy, it was denser than the previous world but not equal to the first one.
As he was spreading his senses, he felt a slight tug on his reiatsu. He focused in that direction and soon enough came across a huge disturbance. His eyes snapped open from what he 'saw'. He saw a village being destroyed by a gaint 9 tailed fox. It was orange in color and nearly 80 meters tall. Though its tails were larger than its body. What surprised him was that the creature was a mass of densely packed energy with sentience and emotions, though right now it was probably being controlled by someone or something, as its intelligence was being suppressed.
Ichigo focused on the creature and found where the tug had come from. Inside the creature, where its heart should be, was a fist size piece of zangetsu. Ichigo didn't waste any time and ran towards the village. The creature was strong, but with ichigo's current body, it would be hard to hurt him.
As he was nearing the creature, he saw a blond man appearing and suddenly there was a large cloud of smoke and a gigantic toad, nearly the size of the creature fell on the fox. Ichigo was definitely surprised but he didn't stop and kept going.
When he nearly reached the battle, he saw the blond man going through some hand signs in quick succession and just as he stepped inside a glowing circle, Ichigo, the blond man and both the toad and the fox appeared quite a distance away from the destroyed village.
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Minato was very stressed and anxious. Today was supposed to be a happy day. The day the love of his life gave birth to their son. Everything was going great when suddenly this masked man attacked. The man took his newly born son, Naruto, hostage and demanded that he stepped away from Kushina. Minato did as he said and the man threw his son up in the air and while he saved Naruto, the man appeared before Kushina and extracted the Kyuubi.
And few moments later, the bijuu was on a rampage right in the middle of the village. Minato could see the sharingan on the Kyuubi's eyes so it was clear that the man doing it was an Uchiha. He knew that Madara had done the same in his fight against the shodai Hokage, Hashirama.
After dealing with the man, Minato hurriedly teleported to the Kyuubi and seeing it still rampaging, he summoned Gamabunta to restraint Kyuubi while he worked on a teleportation seal big enough for it. Just as he was done and activated the seal, an orange haired man entered the range of the seal. Minato barely had the time to curse as he, with the new arrival, was teleported to Kushina, away from the village.
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As Ichigo's body and mind was very strong and he was used to extreme speeds, he didn't feel the affect of sudden teleportation. He jumped at the fox and punched straight at the the part where the piece of his zanpakuto was floating. He punched through the body and his whole arm, up to his shoulder was inside the creature. He touched the piece with his chain and it was attached to it and quickly started being absorbed. He jumped back before the creature could slap him to the ground and just as he landed, strange chains erupted all around the creature and bound it in place.
Ichigo looked back and saw a woman with bright red hair with blood flowing from her mouth and the chains were extending from her back. He had already gotten what he wanted and looked towards the blond man and asked with a straight face,
"Do you want me to get rid of the creature? Err....."
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Minato was ready to teleport the orange haired man away and get rid of him as soon as he could but before he could do anything, the man jumped at the Kyuubi and punched it. Minato was sure that he would be swatted away like a bug but the man penetrated the body of the Kyuubi and his hand was inside the Kyuubi upto his shoulder. He jumped back just as quickly and Minato could see a strange fist sized metallic piece attached to the chain on his arm that was not there before he punched the beast. Before he could say anything, Kushina's adamantine sealing chains erupted all around the 9-tailed fox and bound it in place. The man turned towards him and said with a straight face and a calm voice,
"Do you want me to get rid of the creature? Err....."
Minato without any hesitation said,
"Minato and can you please help my wife keep it in place?"
"Ichigo, and it shouldn't be that hard with the chains."
"Thanks."
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Minato started going through the hand signs for Shiki-Fujin and soon a shinigami emerged behind him. Ichigo saw the shinigami even though only the caster should be able to see it. Minato sealed the Yin half inside himself and the Kyuubi shrunk to nearly half its original size. Ichigo seeing this said,
"Miss, you should tighten the chains around the fox."
Kushina hearing him, tightened her adamantine chains. Soon Minato could move for a while before the shinigami consumed his soul. He hurriedly sealed the Yang half inside Naruto before talking with Kushina. He knew he didn't have enough time so he took a good look at his son and saaid a few things to both of them before smiling and accepting his fate of eternally fighting against the Yin half of the Kyuubi. Kushina was crying while holding Naruto and saying her farewell to her beloved.
What they didn't see was the shinigami staring at Ichigo with interest and said in a strangely soft and clear voice,
"You have an extremely strong affinity towards death, its like I'm looking at another shinigami, but there shouldn't be more than one death god in each world."
Hearing this Ichigo frowned and answered,
"You are looking at a death god but from the world I came from, there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of death gods. Some much stronger than the others."
The shinigami hearing this was extremely intrigued and completely forgot about Minato.
"Interesting, very interesting. You say that you are not from this world and what you just said does not follow the rules of this universe and it is clear to me that you are speaking the truth. Say, do you have any methods that allow me to leave this world and travel to others?"
Ichigo's frown lessened as he said,
"Let alone tell you the method of travelling, I don't even know how I'm doing it."
The shinigami chuckled and with its face, it looked very scary.
"True true, travelling the universe, let alone the multiverse, is already hard enough. Rather I don't think anyone from this universe has traveled outside of it. I know for a fact that there are other worlds in this universe and that they have their own version of death gods, but there is always one death god for each world, that is the law of this universe. You coming here proves that the multiverse exists."
Ichigo shrugged,
"I don't know and don't really care about it. My world or universe as you say was destroyed and I'm looking for any survivors or the one helping me to ask about any other survivors."
The Shinigami, asked with a slight awe,
"A being strong enough to destroy a whole universe or was it something else that destroyed it?"
With an angry scowl, Ichigo answered,
"A power hungry asshole that wanted to destroy everything since he didn't get anything. I managed to kill him, but with his death everything around me started crumbling. I don't know why that happened though, I thought everything would go back to normal once I defeated him."
At this point, Ichigo was getting more and more angry and depressed and his power was crushing everything around him. This in turn caught the attention of Minato and Kushina who were still talking, lost in their own world, and Minato realized that he was still fine and that the Shinigami was looking at the new arrival.
Though when he looked at the man, he was shocked to find the surroundings being crushed by the man's powerful chakra and the man definitely looked angry.
As if sensing eyes on him, Ichigo calmed down and asked the Shinigami,
"What is the price for helping the blondie?"
"Who says there is a price?"
"I don't believe for a second that you would do anything without something in return."
"That is true, what he did was call upon me to create a nigh impenetrable seal to lock away the the bijuu with the price being his soul."
"So you can't let him go?", Ichigo asked with his scowl returning.
By this point, the third Hokage had also shown up and was talking to Minato while keeping an eye on the intruder. Who, according to Minato, was having a conversation with the Shinigami.
"There are loopholes of course, the original seal stated that it had to be something that I deem of equal value, but what he used was an extreme version used by the creators in desperation. In exchange for their soul they would not die not the next 10 minutes even if their heads were cut off."
"That means you can let him go, right?"
"Yes, the confirmation of the theory, that the multiverse exists is enough price for a small seal, but I'll let him go on another condition that when you understand and learn the method for travelling the multiverse, you will come back and tell me about it."
"Fine, if and I mean 'if' I learn the method, I will come back and tell you."
"Good enough for me. see you around."
With that said, the Shinigami vanished, leaving behind a trio of confused shinobi.
