Strange World.

It took Ichigo about a week to accept that he was in a completely new world... and that he was already in debt to someone he had barely come to know for that week. The entire week went by in a haze of new knowledge. All he did was learn about this new world and the people in it. The Youkai had thankfully left him alone, besides the dozen or so distant observers, that is. He didn't really need to eat or sleep and only did those activities due to habit. Besides that, all his time was used for observing and studying about this new place and people he had found himself entangled with.

First he found out that he was surprisingly in Japan, amidst Youkais, the same ones in the Japanese mythology of his world. Most, if not all, of the other countries were also the same as in his own world. The cities were also the same, not similar, but same. There were of course changes, but the major cities were the exact same. The recent history was also the same. The warring state period, the Edo period, the Meiji, the Showa, were the same. The two world wars also happened but the nukes weren't dropped. Before the Warring states period though, the history was strange. It was basically incomplete. Or it felt like the historians had constantly changed a lot of it.

He had asked his observers the reason for such gaps and was told that a great war between the three factions of bible was occuring during that time, which slowly, over the course of more than a thousand years, had included nearly every single faction or Pantheon in the world, besides a few that remained isolated.

The Great War had started with the Angels, the Devils and the Fallen Angels, Grigori, fighting each other. The Grigori, having the least amount of fighters decided to recruit and ally with the factions and pantheons outside of their circle. This led to the other two also trying to find new allies, which in turn, led to old grudges coming to light and new ones to form. Due to this, the war which should have been shortlived and limited to the Biblical faction was spread all over the world and no supernatural faction was spared of its ugliness.

In the end, over the course of thousand plus years, it led to the death of hundreds of billions of creatures all over the world, supernatural and mundane. It was one of the reasons all the other factions were leery of the biblical faction and anyone associated with them. The great war had to be stopped and in the end, when it was finally stopped, no one was declared the winner. Everyone lost, especially those that wanted to gain something by allying themselves with one of the three biblical factions.

After the Great War ended, it didn't take even a few centuries for the devils to enter a Civil War, but this time, no one else joined any sides and the civil war between the devils remained between the devils. That civil war ended around the time the Warring states period in Japan started, during which all the supernatural factions had gone into hiding, away from the mundanes, to focus on healing and recovering from the devastation. Due to this, the history that the mundanes wrote was clear after that time but completely messed up before that. It was same all over the world. That was also around the time that the mundanes slowly started to move away from religion and superstitions, towards science and logic. They, the supernaturals, didn't mess with the history, the mundanes simply didn't want to believe in the real one and created their own messed up history with gaps and 'strange' events.

After hearing all of this and reading everything himself, did Ichigo finally start to understand that he was in a completely different world that only looked the same on the surface. But that wasn't all, he learned that all the other mythologies that he had read in his own world were also real in this one. Takamagahara was real and the Shinto gods lived there. Greek gods were real, Norse gods were real, the Chinese gods were real, all the gods in Hinduism were real. The more he read and heard about this world, the stranger it got. How was the world created if all the 'creation' gods were real? Because he didn't believe for a second that these creation gods wouldn't fight each other for the right of creation. The more he read, the more confused he got, so he stopped reading. It didn't matter to him how this world was created, just that he was now in it.

He started to read more about the factions and pantheons that existed so he could figure out what he was supposed to do in this world. The Hindu Pantheon was unanimously believed to be the strongest due to the sheer number of gods they had and the fact that their strongest, Shiva, was the fourth and sometimes third strongest creature in the entire world, right below the two Dragon Gods that were said to be unbeatable and the God in Bible. After that, many still believed the biblical faction to be the second in strength, but only if the three factions could combine their powers, since they were still divided, it was debatable. After that, it got more confusing as the factions kept on bickering on who was stronger and the positions kept changing.

He also learned that many factions had been destroyed completely during the Great War. Many, if not all, of the Irish Gods were dead and the Pantheon no longer existed. If any remained, they had been in hiding for long enough to be forgotten. The Aztecs were annihilated and only a few ruins of their existence still remained. Most of the African Deities were dead. The Maya Pantheon, Slavic Pantheon and the Inca Pantheon were also considered dead because no one knew how many of them survived and because no one had seen or even heard rumors about their continued existence.

After that, he learned about the Top Ten, the ten strongest creatures in this world. The first was the Dragon of Dreams, Great Red. Second was the Dragon of Infinity, Ophis. Third was either the Hindu God of Destruction, Shiva or the God of Bible, Yahweh, Yhwach or Juha Bach. When he first heard that name, he went nearly crazy with anger, thinking that he was same one he loathed. The pressure he released was strong enough to flatten the entirety of Kyoto but the leader of the Youkai, Yasaka came and stopped him. He thanked her asked her how long this Yahweh had been in this world for and was told that he had been here for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. That managed to calm him down, it might have been the case of having similar name, like so many other things in this world, but he would remain vigilant.

The other six, of the top ten, kept going up and down with few remaining there for more than a decade. The Evil Dragon, Crom Cruach. The current Lucifer, Sirzechs. The Lord of the Dead, Hades. The All-Father, Odin, were few that had constantly remained in the top ten for the last few centuries.

Thinking about it now, his reaction to the name was definitely a bit too much. He knew that the pressure he released passively was strong enough to kill a normal person if they got close to him, not to mention if he actively released his spiritual pressure. If Yasaka hadn't gotten to him so fast, some of the Youkais would definitely have died. It was likely that any humans in this side of Kyoto already had died after that few seconds.

Lastly, he focused on the people around him at the moment, the Youkais. They were a strange bunch. Many of them, he knew through Japanese folklore and stories. They were different from the stories he had heard though, in a sense that they were more... mellow. They were divided into two factions, East and West. Yasaka was the leader of the West Youkai faction and Nurarihyon was the leader of East Youkai faction. Shuten-doji was apparently the leader of the tribe of Oni and was well liked and respected. Similar to him, many of the others that were part of horror stories back in his world, were well liked and respected.

The leaders of both factions were allies and had remained non-aggressive against each other for centuries now. There wasn't much difference between the two, other than that the more human looking were in Kyoto and the more bizarre looking were in Kanto, where the east Youkai faction was established.

Yasaka was a nine tailed fox that were hailed as signs of good omen and were known as guardians of temples in his world. Here, she was loved and revered by nearly every Youkai. She was not only a great leader but also a powerful one.

He also asked her about the different power levels in this world. It was divided quite clearly. Lowest were the normal humans. Then the low-level beings, then mid-level and then high-level. Most stopped at this point, unable to get any stronger. In an army, the high-levels would be the elite. After that came the Ultimate Class. It was divided into three tiers basically. Lower, Middle and Upper. These were the head of clans and even leaders of some smaller factions in case of upper ultimate. Yasaka, using her full powers, including the power of the land itself, could reach the Upper Ultimate Class. It was considered an amazing feat for a leader of such a small faction to be so powerful. A source of pride for all Youkai.

After that came the true monsters. Each faction or Pantheon gave the ones who broke past the ultimate class their own name. The Angels had Seraphim for Michael, the devils had super-devil for Sirzechs, Maheshwar for Shiva, All-Father for Odin and so on.

Now, back to Yasaka. Yasaka was... beautiful. That was the only word he could think of that would describe her perfectly. Her outer beauty notwithstanding, the way she handled her people and especially the way she was with her daughter was just... He had seen a lot of beautiful women in his short life. Orihime, Rukia, Yoruichi, Rangiku, they were all beautiful but Yasaka's beauty was enough to leave him speechless even after seeing her everyday for a week. Ichigo shook his head to clear his thoughts on that. The thoughts that came to his mind whenever he saw her were not good. That had, of course, happened before but not this persistently.

For now though, he had to clear his mind. He had bigger worries to focus on right now. The main one being, what was he supposed to do now that he was here alive and mostly okay.

He decided that the first thing he had to do was to create a grave for his family and friends. So he went to Yasaka and asked about it.

-------------------------POV-Change-------------------------

Yasaka was having a slow month of a slow year of a calm decade. She knew it wouldn't last and anything that came after such calm years were bound to change a lot of things. While the humans considered a decade a long time, for long living beings such as them, a decade could be as short as a weekend, if it went by particularly quick. It would soon be the end of the weekend and hectic days were ahead of them. She sighed, thinking about the future and what it would entail for her little daughter. Just as she finished that thought, she felt a slight disturbance in space followed by a truly massive displacement of energy.

It felt like a black hole had suddenly appeared and was sucking in a specific kind of energy around itself. The overall effect of such a thing were not small. She couldn't see that far away, so she tried contacting her Lady to ask for instructions. Something had just entered Japan through a crack in space, not teleported willingly, but either thrown here by someone or an experiment gone wrong. The amount of energy being displaced though, told her that whatever it was, it was not in her powers to handle. She quickly got a reply saying that she should head for the disturbance with extreme caution, so she gathered a handful of her strongest and started to head for the 'black hole'.

As they got closer, the energy being sucked got slower and by the the they made it the place, the disturbance had completely stopped. The surrounding energy quickly started to fill the empty space left behind and everything started to go back to normal, except a clearly humanoid being standing at the center of the disturbance. The being looked like a young, orange haired japanese male. He looked somewhat battered with torn clothes and dried blood on his body. He looked handsome enough but the eyes were an unnatural black and yellow. He was also carrying a large and much thicker Khyber looking sword in one hand. The stranger was already looking towards them with and unnerving smile. A smile full of battle thirst. But strangely, as they were getting ready for a losing fight, because they would lose even if she used everything in her arsenal, the stranger looked conflicted for a second before putting the sword away and showing his empty hands.

A sign that he didn't want to fight even though he was ready to attack them a moment ago. She told her party that she would proceed alone but they were adamant to follow her. She went ahead and asked who he was and he was here. The answer was strange enough but the voice that answered was once again unnatural. It was like two voices overlapped, one being the original and the.. other... oh. The answer was slow to come but it came. As the stare down was going on between them, she concentrated and felt another, stronger ego inside the being in front of her. She had the strongest connection to nature, especially on her own land and she felt the inner ego to be the natural one.

Now that she understood the unnatural thing about the one in front of them, she readied her transformation and asked for her Lady's help before confronting the being.

"You... are not the owner of that body are you? I will ask you once again spirit! Who are you, why are you here and why have you possessed that young man's body?!"

Instead of being angry or trying to deny her, it seemed amused and stayed still as her people surrounded it and readied their sealing talismans. It eagerly asked why she thought so and waited for them to make the first move. Just as she was ready to give the signal, the being clicked his tongue and muttered,

"Now you wake up."

before clicking his tongue again and going limp. She felt the other stronger and natural ego take over. The eyes also turned to look human. In the place of a hungry predator now stood a vigilant hunter. She asked the same question for a third time, letting none of the annoyance she felt into her voice and the answer she got only increased her annoyance. She asked for her Lady's guidance once more and was told to receive the stranger as a guest and to treat them carefully. She was still a bit annoyed so she didn't even question the advice and invited the person to her castle.

As they were going to her castle, she asked the young man questions about himself and what could have possibly lead to him landing in her territory with what she felt was a forced teleportation or an experiment gone wrong, same thing basically.

The young man introduced himself as Ichigo Kurosaki and the tale that followed the introduction was as fascinating as it was terrifying. A whole world destroyed by a single being, with only him as the lone survivor. A being that could do such a thing was on the level of Great Red and Ophis. Not only that, the young man following her, who had not only killed such a foe but also survived the destruction of a world, was even more scary. He didn't mention any names or what kind of being he was but now that they were away from the center of the spiritual storm, she could feel the power of death wafting around Ichigo. He had to be some kind of elder death god, that was the only conclusion she could come up with. It also explained her Lady's instructions to treat the young 'looking' man as a guest and their careful treatment.

The annoyance suddenly became a headache. Just as she was thinking about hard times coming upon them, a calamity crashed into her lands. She just hoped that this calamity didn't destroy them completely because she was already sure that a lot of things would be destroyed. As they neared her castle, a thought suddenly came to her mind with all the subtlety of a battering ram and she sighed.

'Kunou!'