A Shinigami's Quest (Dropped).

Ichigo was lost, completely and utterly lost. He was floating in the void with nothing around him. He could barely move his eyes and nothing else. In his mind, his life was replaying from the start to finish again and again. He saw how his mother died due to him, how he could have saved so many more people, how he was lead around by the nose due to his rash and headstrong attitude, how so many of his loved ones got hurt again and again due to his recklessness, how much of an idiot and an asshole he was, how he ignored so many important things around him and much more, Ichigo saw them countless times.

The first tens or hundreds of times seeing it was painful, he regretted it so much, found so many stupid and idiotic decisions, his recklessness and it's consequences, he thought hundreds of time, 'what if I had done it this way' or 'what if I had done it that way', but there was nothing he could do, he didn't even know whether he was alive or dead.

After that he started to notice the little things, how many people and signs of him being manipulated he ignored, many of the signs were right in front of him but he completely ignored them. He also saw that some of the girls around him had feelings for him that he ignored, especially Orihime, she stayed with him from the start and even in the end she was still with him, silently supporting him and how he ignored her saying that he had to get stronger or he wouldn't be able to protect them.

He saw everything countless times, especially his world and all the people inside getting destroyed, any man would have broken long ago from seeing such a scene so many times but ichigo had some hope. He didn't notice it the first hundreds of thousands of times but as he was nearly broken he saw something that gave him hope. That hope was what made him keep his sanity. He saw Orihime, when he was being ejected from the world or maybe even the universe, he caught a glimpse of Orihime during his last moments of consciousness.

Ichigo knew that Orihime had a strange power of rejection, she had helped him in many situations. She could reject attacks, damage, wounds and many other things, Urahara even thought that if she progressed and advanced enough, she might be able to reject even death, though it may cost her. He knew that orihime was there when he was fighting yhwach, she was yelling for him to stop fighting but he once again, in his rage and recklessness, completely ignored her. If not for the countless replays, he might not even know that Orihime was still there. He didn't know what price she had to pay to safe him, but it was definitely not small.

As he thinking of Orihime and where she was he suddenly felt a crushing force and extreme pain, but it went away as quickly as it came, still the pain was so strong that he lost consciousness as soon as he felt it.

After a while he opened his eyes and for the first time, in what felt like thousand years, saw light. It took his eyes quite a while to adjust to the sudden change and after nearly half an hour he could see where he was. The first thing he saw was yellow and the first thing he felt was heat. He looked around and saw that he was in a massive crater and there was sand all around him. Ichigo saw the sand quickly filling the hole he was in and tried to move his body but he could barely even feel his body other than the heat.

His body was inactive for too long so it would require him some time to regain control over his body. After a while he noticed that his body is not being buried in the sand but is rather floating like a log in water. His body was being pushed up by the sand filling the hole. But this was good, at least he wouldn't get buried alive.

Slowly his body started to respond and started to feel itchy. The sun was starting to set when finally ichigo could move his body. He stood up and felt extremely light. He looked at his own body and frowned because all he saw was a tall skeleton with barely any muscles. His skin was dry and his lips were cracked. He looked like a drug addict.

It was clear that he was taller than before and his hair had also grown longer reaching the lower end of his shoulder blades. He stretched his body and heard a lot of cracking but strangely he didn't feel any pain. He saw that on his right hand was a black chain, it covered nearly half of his arm. He recognized it since it was a part of zangetsu. According to the state of his body and hair, he had spent at least 3-4 years in the void but it really felt like thousand years for him.

As he started to move, he felt that it was easier? to move, even with the condition his body was in, he still felt like he could run a marathon easily. He looked up and saw the sun setting over the horizon. He looked around himself and only saw sand. He was in a middle of a desert. As he kept moving he finally started to feel thirsty. He released a thin strand of his reiryoku to scan the surroundings for some water.

He thought that the spiritual energy would grow weaker as it went further but he felt it getting stronger and spreading faster. In just a few minutes it had covered the whole desert and kept going forward. Ichigo was getting all this information directly inside his head but he didn't feel any pain. The reiryoku suddenly stopped moving forward and lost all its momentum the moment it reached the boundry of the desert.

Ichigo didn't care about that for now as he had found a well not far from him and ran towards it and when he finally saw it, he simply jumped into the well. The well didn't have a lot of water in it, barely reaching his waist, as soon as he started drinking it, he couldn't stop. He kept drinking and drinking. His body also started to gain some life, now he at least looked alive.

The water reaching his waist had sunk down to his knees. He lied down, completely submerging his body in the water and stayed there and started to feel his surroundings with his spiritual energy. He was extremely surprised to notice that there was spiritual energy just floating around in the atmosphere. He didn't notice it before because he was too thirsty and disoriented. This was probably the reason why his body felt so good and he recovered so easily from his condition and also why his thin strand of reiryoku gained more power as it traveled further. Finally after a few minutes under water, he felt much better but he started to feel hungry, very hungry.