24 Mexico (3/3).

"Hmm. Inari-chan, you don't have to worry about me taking him from you. I am perfectly fine with sharing and please call me Kuku as well." Kuku replied with a laugh.

"Wha-what are you talking about? The-there is nothing between me and Ichigo, we are just friends." She was a bit sad at the end. She believed that she was obvious enough in showing him her affection, but he didn't seem to notice it, at all!

"Then jump him if you don't want others to take your place. I have only met him an hour ago and I can say it with full confidence that he will attract more attention towards himself and I do mean other women." Kuku said rolling her eyes.

"I don't know how much the human world has changed in my time stuck here, but in our world, if you want something, you take it. It has always been like that and it will always remain like that." Kuku said seriously.

She was correct. Their world has always been like that. There were many examples of powerful men and women taking everything they wanted without regards to anyone. If another woman more powerful than her took a liking to Ichigo, she could get rid of her to have him for herself and there were a lot of powerful women in this world.

She sighed. Did she really have to jump his bones to get her message across? Or was she satisfied with waiting till he returned her feelings himself? She already knew her answer. If she jumped him, he would blame himself and stay with her out of obligation. She didn't want that. Such a relationship wouldn't even last a decade, let alone centuries. Sighing one more time, she answered.

"Ichigo is... special. If I were to seduce him, he would blame himself for falling for it and remain with me due to his morals and his sense of obligation. Such a thing wouldn't even last a decade. I want something stronger and I know I can get it from him if I waited for a while. He is still getting over his lost family and trying to move on. Knowing him, it will take sometime. I am willing to wait until then." She said with determination.

"Then you keep waiting for him while the number of women pining after him also keep on increasing. There's only you and me for now, but I'm willing to bet that, that will change very quickly." Kuku said.

"How can you already have feelings for him? You said it yourself that you only met him an hour ago." Inari replied looking at Kuku.

"I'm a dragon first and foremost. He is powerful and he saved me. It is also possible that he is the Lord of Hell, one of the largest realms ever discovered, one that not even Lucifer could lay full claim on. He presses all of my buttons." She said with a smile.

"I watched him as he helped me for no reason other than that he could. You also said that he is a moral and a sensible man. The only fault I see with him is that he is dense." She said with a bigger slightly mischievous smile.

"As a dragon, I'm a very straightforward woman. I like something, I let the world know and well, I have my own reason." She added with a dangerous smirk. From what she understood, Ichigo was a powerful person not affiliated with any group. Someone like that could help her get revenge on the fuckers that destroyed her home.

They were not exactly quiet when they were talking to each other but Ichigo still didn't hear them. Probably because some higher power wanted to see some drama. Ichigo was in his inner world thinking over Inari's words. Hell Chains always appear after a Hell Gate opens. The chains then drag the sinner back through the gate. He knew that because he had experienced it first hand.

What happened before was different. There was no Hell Gate. The chains appeared on their own from a hole in the ground and dragged the abomination down into the hole and then vanished. He was currently inside the dungeon that had appeared in his inner world. He had a feeling that he had to sit on the throne for him to be fully 'accepted' and get a few answers.

'Eh, why not. It would do the world some good if I were to get rid of some sinners and abominations.' He knew that he couldn't exactly get rid of all of them, so why set an impossible goal for himself? A few sinners here and a few abominations there was good enough. More importantly,

'I would have something to do, rather than sit around and mop.' He felt that doing this might make them proud.

"Zangetsu! I'm going to sit on the... hell throne. Knock me out if something crazy starts to happen!" Ichigo shouted to Zangetsu, who was outside the dungeon.

"Define crazy!" Zangetsu replied.

"If it looks like I'm dying!" Ichigo said as Zangetsu appeared next to him.

"Let's do this. I'm excited!" Zangetsu said with an eager grin.

So he went ahead and sat on the simple looking throne. He kept saying throne but it was more like a natural protrusion of rocks. All the rocks were black. They were arranged to form a rough shape of a chair. As he sat down, his first thought was, 'Huh, surprisingly comfortable.'

For a few seconds, he just sat on it, wiggling, trying to find the best position. As he put his left elbow on the rock that formed the armrest and put his chin on his hand, there was a rumble. At first he thought it was happening in his inner world, so he got a bit worried, but then Zangetsu told him it was happening on the outside. He quickly came outside to see himself floating off the ground, still in his meditation pose, while a Hell Gate appeared behind him and started to open.

The other two were completely immobilized while looking at the ominous gate. It looked the same as the one that opened in Karakura town. Two skeletons merged with each door. Both skeletons had one hand free and the other was not visible. The heads had bandages warped around them. Both of the skeletons had visible horns with many sealing tags pasted on them.

As the door slowly opened, the large hand of a Kushnada came out and stopped in front of him. He looked at it for a while before touching it with his left hand. The moment he touched the hand, a seal started forming on his palm. It only took a few seconds for the seal/tattoo to fully form. It looked like a summoning circle of a devil he had seen but a lot more simple. It had a smaller circle inside a bigger circle. The bigger circle had four more smaller circles on equal distance from each other. Inside the smaller circle was a hexagon filled with symbols he couldn't understand.

As soon as the seal finished forming, the hand went back inside and the hell gate quickly closed before disappearing. He kept looking at his left hand. The other two also came out of their stupor as the gate vanished and quickly rushed to him. Before they could ask anything though, Zangetsu pulled Ichigo inside his inner world again. He knew something was different before even looking around. He was still sitting on the throne as he looked around.

And yep, there was a hell gate in here. It was a smaller version of the ones outside, but it was there, in his inner world. Probably a permanent mark on his soul since he didn't exactly know how to get rid of it. But, he wasn't going back on his words. He had said that he would use this new power to help people and that was exactly what he was going to do.

He came outside once again and saw both Inari and Kuku looking at him from above with clear concern. Inari seemed like she was going to start fussing over him, so he quickly said,

"I'm fine and I'm not the lord of hell. I'm an agent it has chosen. My duties are... well I only have a single duty and that is to help it drag any sinner or abomination I find into it." Ichigo said in a single breath before they could say anything. One thing he was really bad at handling was a crying woman. As they all calmed down, Kuku spoke up, thankfully wearing normal clothes. Where she got the clothes from, he didn't know.

"What is your plan then?"

"I was hoping to catch a few more of those phantoms you talked about earlier. Any phantom left to it's devices could cause a lot of harm. Do you know any other pantheons that were destroyed and could use some help?" Ichigo said with a frown.

"There is one more, if I remember correctly. It was the Celtic pantheon. All of the gods were killed, their temples, worshipping grounds as well as their worshippers were all killed and destroyed. I don't know if the phantoms are still present or if they have already been exterminated." Inari said after some thought.

"Then, we know where we are going next. Are you coming with us?" Ichigo said to Kuku.

"Yes, I will be follow you for sometime because I don't really have anything else to do and I also want to find who killed my friends." Kuku replied with a smile.

They didn't waste any more time and left the forsaken and broken realm. Since they were in another realm, nobody else had felt the Hell Gate manifest. If it had happened in the human world, all the surrounding supernatural species would have felt it. Most of the supernatural was afraid of hell since they had in their longer lives done quite a few bad things. But before leaving Mexico, they decided to update Kuku on all the changes that had happened over the centuries. Well Inari did and he just listened.

She told Kuku about the devil civil war, their peerage/evil piece system, stray devils, changes in the top 10 list and a few more things. He asked them how the different pantheons and groups had gotten involved in the great war between the three factions. According to them, the first one to involve outside forces was Azazel.

His fallen had the smallest number of combatants so he roped in different gods, demi-gods, rouge gods and many other species to his side. The other two, seeing how effective it was, also started to gather allies from the outside. It didn't take long for old grudges to come to surface and for all the different pantheons to start fighting each other by allying themselves with one of the three factions. It took even less time after that for the whole world to start fighting each other for one reason or another.

That is why it was called the Great War and not infighting between the three biblical factions. He learned that a lot of gods had died and returned as phantoms. Most of these were killed by the other gods as a final mercy, but few still remained. Like the Aztecs. Since the whole pantheon was killed, there was no one to request help from other gods. Celtic was the only other faction completely destroyed.

They slowly made their way through Mexico one last time before leaving for Ireland. Ichigo realized that he now had two women traveling with him. Oh, he had realized Inari's feelings a while ago, she made them quite obvious, but he didn't want to rush anything. He had been forced to look at the other girls in his life during the times he relived it. He had realized that during his entire life, he had ignored the feelings of people around him, thinking it would be better for them to not involve themselves with him. But he had a feeling that if he tried that with these two, they would beat him up. So, he kept quiet and waited for the right time to give her an answer. He was pretty sure his life had been extended by the crazy things happening to him.