Chapter Text
It was a clear night out in Karakura Town. The streets had a faint whiff of car smoke, something that Naruto had gotten used to, but the atmospheric pollution did nothing to hide the gleaming stars in the sky. The moon hung high, the sparse wisps of clouds doing nothing to hide its eerie glow.
Well, at least it started that way.
A freak storm occurred, clouds brewing out of nowhere, hurtling a depressing rain down on upon the streets of Karakura Town, leaving one Uzumaki Naruto soaked to the bone.
"Well, at least the moon's gone," Naruto muttered to himself, his dull expression unmoving in face of the miniscule rivers flowing underneath his mop of yellow hair.
For much of his life, Naruto never liked the moon. Even after so many years, the brief, but intense days of the Fourth Shinobi War had plagued him. Far too many of his nights had been interrupted by the haunting image of a red moon, spinning tomoe swimming across his vision for the few moments it had once taken him to separate his nightmares from his new reality.
He may feel like he had just escaped a water prison jutsu, but he would take that any day over having to look up at the moon. Though he did have to admit that his uncomfortably wet underwear was definitely fighting that ancient conviction of his.
His eyes narrowed at the dwindling reiatsu not too far from his location on a rooftop and continued on his journey.
Naruto had noticed the odd reiatsu signature, which had been fluctuating and spiking far too much to be normal. He had exited the Karakura streets, entering a nearby alleyway so that he could quickly jump up to a rooftop unseen in order to travel faster to the location he had felt the wild reiatsu.
Reiryōku, Naruto correct his thoughts. There is no way such chaotic energy could possibly be considered reiatsu.
It was true. Every graduate of Shin'ō Academy had to learn how to control their reiryōku, their raw spiritual energy, in order for them to become a Shinigami. Reiatsu was controlled, reiryōku was not, something he remembered due to it being drilled into his head all those years ago.
Still, Naruto did acknowledge that the previously flailing reiryōku was reminiscent of a Shinigami's. He supposed that he should probably worried about that, not to mention the other two Shinigami energy signatures that he could vaguely make out, one of which was definitely Captain-class, but he shoved that thought away. He was never one for pussyfooting around because of annoying things like fear.
Arriving at his destination, landing in a squat on an awning of a nearby shop some dozen or so meters from the street, he noticed that the two Shinigami energy signatures he could sense in the street were different from those he had previously sensed. Upon seeing two familiar figures, one with a familiar hat and cane holding an umbrella. It was the other figure that caught his attention, specifically what said figure was holding in his arms.
At the sight of the unconscious, and bleeding, teenager in a Shinigami outfit, Naruto couldn't stop himself from saying, "What the hell are you doing?"
Kisuke whipped around, eyes widening after instantly spotting Naruto's figure, flicking briefly to the teenager in Tessai's arms before returning to him.
"Oh, uh, this," Kisuke stammered, chuckling nervously at his quick mind easily deducing the not-so-innocent image of the situation. "I have a perfectly good explanation."
Naruto's eyes narrowed in suspicion at his fellow blonde nervously twirling his umbrella.
"Let's say we get out of the rain and talk about this like gentlemen over a cup of tea, yeah?" Kisuke said with a tentative smile.
III
Naruto looked at the man on the other side of the table with a dull expression. "Seriously?"
The two of them were inside of the Urahara Shop, Kisuke's base of operations hidden behind the front of a candy store. Naruto had followed Kisuke and Tessai to the shop, dried off with the towels provided by his hosts and patiently waited for Tessai to bandage the unconscious teenager, whose wounds Kisuke was sure Naruto had noticed to look suspiciously close to a soul's Hakusui and Saketsu pressure points.
After a brief wait for Tessai to brew some tea and serve it to the two blondes, Kisuke had explained the situation to Naruto, who seemed rather incredulous of the story Kisuke provided.
"You can't seriously think I'm dumb enough to buy that," Naruto said.
"It's the truth," Kisuke said a bit too cheerfully, but it was late at night and he hadn't slept all that well the past few nights.
Naruto ran a hand over his face as he took a deep and steadying breath. "A teenage artificial Shinigami is the stupidest thing that I have ever heard."
"It's the truth," Kisuke repeated himself, a tad more seriously.
"Why?" Naruto asked, elaborating at his seemingly confused look, "Why would you allow for this to happen. Don't even try to deny it, I know how paranoid you are and there is no fucking way that you would just allow a kid to sacrifice and endanger himself in your own town."
Kisuke let out a sigh, his cheerful disposition disappearing as he looked down at his tea cup, gently swirling it with a teaspoon. "Aizen has his eye on him."
Naruto's eyes narrowed at that.
"I wouldn't normally do this, you're right about that," Kisuke said, easily reading Naruto's unspoken question. "But I can't overlook anything that catches Aizen's curiosity."
"What interest would Aizen have with this Ichigo kid?" Naruto asked.
"It's a long story, but the short version is that Ichigo Kurosaki's father is Isshin Shiba's son," Kisuke said tiredly, ignoring Naruto's widened eyes. "He is also the son of a Quincy, among other things that would catch Aizen's attention."
"Quincy and Shinigami, eh," Naruto said, turning his head towards the room Ichigo was laid up in. "Yeah, I'd rather not let someone like Aizen get his hooks into him."
"And Hollow," Kisuke muttered, earning a sharp look from Naruto. "Like I said, long story."
Naruto seemed only slightly mollified by that response.
"I'm more interested in why you're here," Kisuke said, fiddling with a closed fan, eyes shining with an innocent curiosity.
He was sure Naruto didn't buy that for a minute. He knew that Kisuke had long since lost his innocence, replaced by a burning need for knowledge that had once allowed him to become the first official President of the Shinigami Research and Development Institute and Captain of the Twelfth Division of the Gotei 13.
"Sightseeing," Naruto replied easily, a singularly uninformative answer.
Kisuke quirked an eyebrow at his response.
"I've been making my way around Japan, I was in Kyoto just before this," Naruto expounded. "As much as I like traveling and seeing the sights and all that, sometimes I need to wind down, take a break and stay in a place for a little while; it's why I came here."
Kisuke hummed at that, spreading open his fan and waving it half-heartedly. His answer was still rather uninformative, his burning need for information left unsatisfied. It was only right to answer with a carefully selected barb, for he couldn't be truly rude as he was much too engrossed in his role as a host, despite their familiarity. "Who would've guessed, the wandering hermit taking a break to settle down for a little while. Yoruichi would be ecstatic."
"Yeah, she'd be quite worked up alright," Naruto said, his lips twitching erratically in a half-suppressed nervous laugh, his hand reflexively reaching up to scratch his cheek.
Naruto hadn't exactly been in contact with the purple-haired beauty for some time. Kisuke had known quite well that the lazy minx hadn't been all that thrilled with Naruto's desire to venture out on his own when Naruto had told her those many years ago. Kisuke had been present for the numerous times that she had expressed her irritation with the whiskered blonde. He was sure that she had many words to say about Naruto's sneaking out in the middle of the night to avoid any further arguments, along with the many the occasions that Kisuke's childhood friend had been able to find the spikey-haired blonde and slipped the leash once more.
With that reminder, Kisuke observed Naruto splitting his focus, no doubt stretching his senses. It had always struck Kisuke as odd that Naruto was able to be so naturally good at stealth and sensing the presence of others. His fellow blonde had been so enthusiastic and, dare he say, bubbly, to the point that the former Captain had once thought that sunshine occasionally leaked out from his eyes, as the rest of it was expertly hidden by his pants and underwear that covered the man's rear end, funneling it back up to his eyes.
Naruto usually would keep his wits about him, his passive sensory more than capable enough to catch any average or above average being's energy signature near him but the Onmitsukidō could bypass those. Not many, maybe a handful at most, but Yoruichi Shihōin was most definitely among them. Kisuke would like to say the same about himself, but he could only manage it when the blonde was busy with something else, and only half the time even then. However, should the situation call for him to actively be on the lookout, the Visored in front of him could not be tricked, save for Aizen himself. Maybe.
"How long do you plan on staying?" Kisuke asked, fishing for information in the hope that the Visored might let loose with his split focus.
Naruto hummed absentmindedly, his attention, unfortunately, at least half focused on the conversation, despite his careful inspection of the Urahara Shōten. "Not sure, might be a couple weeks might be a couple years, you know how it is."
Kisuke nodded in understanding. Time flew by when one lived as long as most Shinigami did. Humans lived spontaneously, their lives too short for truly meaningless activities to take up a majority of their time, cities and countries growing, changing, rapidly; Shinigami were a long-lived people, possibly immortal if uncumbered by disease or injury, and the true reason behind their languid lifestyle was because quick action and stress were unsuitable for the many years they would live.
"Why?" Naruto asked, his eyes shining a bit more as he refocused on Kisuke's own, a dull eyebrow raised due to the innocent expression Kisuke carefully wore.
"No reason, I just figured you would want to stay here for a while. You did come to visit me, after all," Kisuke attempted, his fan waving and voice both jovial, though they didn't quite hide his nervousness.
Naruto just continued staring.
Pinned down under the unrelenting gaze, Kisuke soon folded. He had never been all that intimidated by Naruto when they had served the Gotei 13 in any official capacity, but that had changed after they all left Seireitei.
"Well, to be honest, I'm not sure how this whole situation will play out. Sending a bunch of teens, Yoruichi excepted, to Seireitei is a risky move," Kisuke admitted reluctantly.
While he was usually one to ignore his moral compass, sending a bunch of kids to a decidedly hostile military base was a bit much. It didn't help that one of the kids was the son of a longtime friend, one he discreetly kept in contact with even while on the run from the seemingly strict military force Isshin had still been a Captain of.
That the same friend's wife was also attacked in what he considered to be his territory still weighed heavily on, despite the sure belief in Masaki's strength. He still didn't know what the hell had happened to Masaki, something Ryūken was aggravatingly tight-lipped about when he had analyzed the body of Isshin's wife.
Naruto looked at him incredulously. "You can't seriously be asking me to go back to Seireitei. Who knows how Yama-jī would take that. For all we know, he may just hunt me down himself, and I know for a fact that he'll run through the kids if they stand between us."
"True, true," Kisuke allowed, knowing that could be a possibility. "He would certainly take your presence seriously, and it would definitely put the kids in danger, but that might just be what we need."
At Naruto's inquisitive look, Kisuke snapped his fan shut and used it to point in Ichigo's direction. "His spiritual pressure is growing at an astounding rate, and we all know that a soul's reiatsu increases when faced with the possibility of danger."
"Are you seriously suggesting you want Masaki's kid to fight the Sōtaichō?" Naruto said, his tone half-amused and half-concerned. Despite that, Kisuke didn't miss the slight edge to his voice.
"No, no, that would end terribly!" Kisuke quickly refuted, grasping at an alternative phrasing for a crucial half-second. "But knowing the height of power he may one day achieve, possibly even eclipse? I think that would be good for him."
"Or he could be crushed by the old dragon's presence," Naruto countered more seriously; it would seem that crucial half-second was enough to tip Naruto enough. "Why are you so dead set on the kid increasing his power? If anything, you should be wanting to curb it."
"He's a living soul, his potential could trump Aizen's, naturally," Kisuke replied carefully in a casual voice.
Naruto's eyes narrowed, his expression seemingly chilling the room as a shudder ran down Kisuke's spine. "I hope you don't mean to drag him into this war."
I hope you don't mean to turn him into a weapon.
The unspoken implication did not pass Kisuke by, who quickly waved his hands in a placating gesture, an annoyingly familiar nervous laugh leaving his lips unbidden. "No, no, no, I would never do such a thing, Uzumaki-san."
Kisuke's trick didn't work as he hoped; Naruto disliked it when others treated him so politely, what with being the casual person that he was, especially when it was done by his friends, something he had used to redirect Naruto's anger slightly the past. If anything, it seemed to irk him even more.
"Urahara-taichō," Naruto said softly, the seemingly polite and respectful address of his former title accompanying the well-hidden, but most definitely menacing, tone caused perspiration to run down Kisuke's back, "children are meant to worry about grades and romantic interests and videogames and ramen and whatever else floats into their innocent minds, not megalomaniacs with entirely too much power or sociopathic, invisible creatures knocking on their doors."
"Ahh, Naruto, I would never forcefully drag them into my mess," Kisuke said, blatantly lying in the face of the sole expression that signaled the beginning of that horrible memory responsible for so many of his nightmares from a century past. "I assure you, I have crafted numerous contingencies for the worst-case scenario. This…endeavor is merely a small curio, a harmless experiment for the sake of providing defense to the Kurosaki family." Knowing he would never be believed for a wholly virtuous motive, he tacked on, "With the small chance to one day cure our fellow Visored."
Kisuke knew he could bullshit like the best of them, nearly to the point of exonerating himself and the Visored, he had been able to convince both the ancient Sōtaichō and the rule abiding Kuchiki Ginrei, whose opinion mattered far more than almost four dozen stuffy nobles, but it was different with Naruto.
The Visored in front of him had always been an unknown quantity, years of familiarity decreasing by a small margin, whose intelligence varied between being dumber than a doornail, as it was his idea that Kisuke, Yoruichi, Tessai, and the Visored stay for at least the first half of their trial, which the whiskered Visored had felt vindicated for as they had almost won, to being the possible brainchild of Aizen and Kisuke, a thought that terrified Kisuke quite a bit and left him many sleepless nights after Yoruichi's ranting had brought him up from his latest success at slipping her leash.
Which end of the intelligence spectrum the spiky-haired blonde truly was still mystified him to this very night and whether or not the whiskered man believed his lie was so high in the air that Kisuke kept fanning himself while keeping a loose grip on Benihime and his breath steady; only an amateur would hold their breath during a tense moment or in the middle of determining whether their lie was believed, especially in the possibility of a violent reaction.
"Good. Make sure those contingencies are in place soon; you never know when Aizen might strike," Naruto said pleasantly. The smile on his face did nothing to reassure Kisuke; the murder in his eyes might have had something to do with that. "It's always good to know that you are still looking for a cure for us Visored."
Kisuke couldn't stop his lips from twitching maniacally ever so slightly at the rising man's quip; his somewhat easygoing appearance's only saving grace being the fan that covered it. There wasn't much research to be done in a cure for the Visored condition, he was well aware of it and he very much doubted that the man currently stretching his limbs after rising from his seated position wasn't also aware of it.
The Quincy's unique reishi arrows certainly helped to stabilize the Hollowfication phenomenon, something Kisuke was sure was research for a more advanced and stable Hollowfication. The results of which Kisuke had very little doubt the other Hōgyoku creator used to create the Visored/Arrancar thing that infected Isshin's dear wife, and there were several theories that could be looked into, but Kisuke had hit a roadblock from pursuing them.
All those theories of Kisuke's to look into in order for him to reverse the Visored process was either far too dangerous, required extremely amoral actions that would raise red flags for even the current Captain of the Twelfth Division, just plain stupid, or required the Hōgyoku; he had been outvoted by the Visored that the latter option fell into the 'just plain stupid' category, much to his dismay.
If all of that hadn't been enough, there was, apparently, one more theory, one that Kisuke had either never spoke of or had been discarded immediately, one that only the whiskered blonde across from him knew about. Kisuke had tried to get more information about it from Naruto but his formerly lower-ranked fugitive had been annoyingly tight-lipped.
Of course, there had been that one time, shortly before Naruto had left, that he had pestered the Visored a bit too much and the man thrown up a massive Kidō barrier around the two of them.
Kisuke knew that Naruto hadn't been, and most likely still wasn't, the most proficient in Kidō, despite his previous division, but Naruto's innate curiosity of all things that went bang combined with the boredom of being trapped in a warehouse had made him bother each and every one of the residents that was close by, which had included the three non-Visored fugitives, resulted in many odd things. They had all interacted with, and had eventually taught something to, the energetic blonde, for it had been impossible to evade the persistent bugger in their confined space, but it was Hachigen, being the most patient one of the bunch, that he had spent the most amount of time with, and, being the most genial and helpful person of them all, that gave the help with Naruto's Kidō abilities.
Kisuke still wasn't too sure how much Naruto had actually learned, he had been far too distracted with finding a cure for the Visored at the time, but Naruto had managed to learn how to create barriers that could block out all sight, sound, and reiatsu. It was something that Kisuke had insisted that each and every one of them learn for the sake of security, and escaping detection, from Seireitei's and Aizen's sensors in the Living World. Naruto had used it sparingly, so much so that even Yoruichi, who had spent almost more time with Naruto than Hachigen had, hadn't known about it, much less Kisuke.
What Naruto did inside of that barrier was something Kisuke had never told anyone. Tessai and Yoruichi had the most information of the fugitives, scraps picked up by hushed whispers escaping from his nightmares, but even they weren't told what he witnessed, something that both he and Naruto had kept their mouths shut about.
Of course, Kisuke willfully ignored that he may have been the one at fault, that he had literally asked for it, amongst the other things that his less morally-inclined, past self may had done that made him so deserving of that horror, which Kisuke had also been sure to withhold.
Not that Yoruichi didn't seem to have caught on to, what with the half-concerned, half-amused glances she had sent his way whenever Naruto was brought up.
As Naruto left the room, heading towards the room Kisuke had pointed out for him earlier in the evening, Kisuke couldn't help but feel a tad irritated. Naruto had gotten away without answering his plea for help.
It was difficult for him to even ask the Visored for help. Kisuke was well aware that the vestiges of his broken pride in the wake of discovering someone else had replicated his most precious secret, using it to ruin the lives of too many of his friends, had turned him from the somewhat innocent, ignoring his amoral experimentation, loyal Shinigami, who would have no qualms about asking his friends for help, to the scheming, manipulative fugitive with a hobby for research more willing to manipulate events and people for years in advance to do his bidding than ask for help.
For Naruto to evade him during one of those few moments where he built up enough courage to ask for anything, to bear a weakness was hurtful.
Kisuke waved his fan over his face in an instinctive need to cover his disappointment and hurt. The digits on his right hand brushed against Benihime, his Zanpakutō's voice comforting him as his drummed against her cane form.
I suppose I will have to work on some of those zanier contingency plans. Kisuke thought to himself tiredly. With Naruto's involvement, he would have no choice but to work harder on more solutions to his ever-present nightmare of Aizen attaining his Hōgyoku to feed into the madman's own.
Kisuke wasn't sure if that eventuality would ever occur, the slight hope of his being able to convince Naruto to enter Seireitei once more in order to increase the pathetic odds of stopping Aizen from capturing Byakuya's little sister, but he had given promised Naruto to have several contingencies in place. He hadn't actually promised anything, not even really given his word, but the lie, while serving to prevent Naruto from lashing out at him also damned him to keep it, and Naruto was not someone to forget a promise.
Serves you right, a familiar feminine voice spoke in his head.
Hime-chan, how could you? Kisuke answered back playfully, a grin coming to his as he fluttered his eyelashes and waved his fan in front of his face.
A rather unfeminine snort was all he received to his coy playfulness.
He let out a tired huff, his eyes drooping ever so slightly as the weariness that had settled in his bones more than a century ago made its annoying presence known more so than usual.
Unfortunately, the exhaustion wasn't enough to guarantee a night without him needing to put a barrier to stop any noise from escaping, he was too anxious and worried for his annoying, but thankfully occasional, habit of nightmare-induced muttering to occur. It was, however, enough that he almost missed the quiet sound of the door Naruto just exited from opening once more.
A narrow-eyed glance to the corner of his eye, one of exhaustion instead of suspicion, revealed his longtime friend and companion, Tsukabishi Tessai.
Most would have been astounded that he could even be quiet, what with his usual boisterous behavior, but the two of them had been friends with the former Captain of the Onmitsukidō since childhood. Anything one learned, the others were aware of; anything one mastered, the others acquired a working knowledge of. Being fugitives only made their knowledge and practice of being of so undetectable only further increased what Kisuke and Tessai had learned from the Flash Goddess.
"Tenchō, Uzumaki-san gave this to me before he went to his room," Tessai said, his enormous hand grazing across the surface of the table between and depositing a small slip of paper in front of him before shuffling out of the room with two motions of the sliding door.
Kisuke looked at it with curiosity, weary tiredness nearly making it impossible for him to keep his eyes open, but he managed.
'I'll look out for the kids. I promise.' Holes carved somewhat neatly across the stark white of the paper.
Kisuke smiled tiredly. He felt a twinge of hope that he might have a decent night of sleep. After all, come hell or a maniacal madman hell-bent on becoming a god, Uzumaki Naruto does not break his promises.
"Too close! You're too close!" a voice yelped.
"Tenchō! Ichigo has regained consciousness! Tenchō!" Tessai called.
Kisuke's smile dropped. He had to have done that on purpose! The timing is too good!
With that, Kisuke stood up and straightened from his tired slouch, fan flowing open as an exuberant expression took over his face.
Kisuke had an image to maintain.
III
Sleep was something that Uzumaki Naruto never had problems with. Whether it was in the middle of a Captain's meeting or before and after his shift of keeping guard during a night's rest on a mission. He had been an orphan who learned that conking out for a night was much easier than dealing with the sadness of not being tucked in by his dead parents like he had heard the bigger kids in the playgrounds tease the younger ones about.
It had served him well when he had been sleeping on the streets as one of the kids in worst parts of Rukongai, as he had been able to block out the grunts and moans coming from the brothel that had a perfect hiding spot behind the trash bins or the screams and pleas for help that he forced himself to ignore when he had been in a far too weakened or exhausted state during his younger years.
It may have been painful, at least emotionally, when he had to fight his natural instinct to help people, but he could do it. It was a leftover habit from his days as a shinobi in order to salvage the abysmal reputation that he had partially brought upon himself during the years before he knew that earning the people's ire was the wrong kind of attention.
Hell, that habit from his old life had nearly ruined his family during his time as Hokage, his celebrity status garnering more requests for help by the impoverished citizens, questions by his subordinates, far too much paperwork to look over and sign, numerous meetings setup by councils he had established to reduce said paperwork, or just plain attention by all the gushing children, not to mention their provocative mothers, and occasionally their fathers, that wanted to meet the idol he had become.
If it weren't for Sakura-chan putting her foot down, he may have ruined things with his wife and his children. He had only wished that it hadn't been on his nuts as she put the absolute maximum of her strength into strangling, which was just a touch below what Kurama could heal, assuming the furred fox could stop choking on his laughter to send some chakra his way.
Still, if he could fight the once-habit, which had eventually formed into a decent, annoyingly sizeable portion of his personality, he could ignore the screams of shock and general yelling of the room not too far from the one he claimed as his own, which carried a faint, but altogether pleasing, whiff of ramen. It helped that the loud voices hadn't lasted long, making the half-annoyed formed barrier to mute all outside sounds a bit redundant.
His time as an orphan had provided many lessons, others would call them 'quirks,' each coming with their own drawbacks, but he had far too few to deal with boredom. The fact that the ever stingy Kisuke threw an apron at him and made him man the counter of a largely unpopular shop did little to help his slow death by monotony.
Has anyone actually died of boredom? Naruto thought to himself. The snort he received from the back of his mind was both entirely unhelpful and entirely ignored.
His fingers itched to play with some of the items hidden behind the counter, the storage space of which was subtly expanded to allow for convenient access to the stock meant for any Seireitei-assigned Shinigami, or otherwise, or the occasional non-Seireitei affiliated, spiritually aware passerby. He knew that it was impolite for an employee to help himself to their place of work's stock, at least without prior permission, but his boredom was fraying at the few manners that he allowed for himself.
Whether it was some sixth sense the man had or observation of his twitching fingers, Tessai cleared his throat and looked down at him shrewdly.
"The workday is almost done. Feel free to hang up your apron on the way out," Tessai said.
Evidently, he didn't buy the innocent beaming expression that Naruto had sent his way. The blonde wondered if he was losing his touch. Then again, the former Captain of the Kidō Corps was rather perceptive, a stark contrast to his stern, but boisterous and amusing demeanor; Naruto mused that it was befitting for someone in such frequent contact with the man's partner.
"Yessir," Naruto jokingly clapped out the most serious salute he had ever given a superior officer, former or not. Neatly hanging his apron on the hooks, Tsukabishi-taichō had always been a bit of a neat freak but nice enough a person to not force his subordinates to conform to his standards, which Naruto respected by adhering to the ex-Shinigami's rules, he hopped over the counter.
He heard a faint goodbye as he left, one he returned with a lazy wave over his shoulder, the peacock feather-shaped wind chimes he'd discovered on his travels and shipped to an offsite postal address of Urahara's bringing a small smile to his face. With a quick ruffle of Jinta's hair and a pat on cute little Ururu's hair, along with a blush-inducing beaming smile, he merged onto the half-empty sidewalk.
He never had an end destination in mind, focused more on exploring Karakura's sprawling metropolis and reacquainting himself to any and all changes made from the last time he was in the city.
Despite it not having been all that long, he couldn't help but feel amazed by the changes. It had grown outward, more so than he had thought was possible in the time of the half-decade since his last visit, the one that had brought Japan to his interest.
He was reminded of the incredible feats that humans could accomplish.
While he had never been one of those souls that thought themselves separate from humanity, many of whom looked down on it with a varied mix of emotions, he couldn't really say he related too much to them. Sure, he wasn't like those stuck up souls like the Central 46, or those nobles that looked down on the short-lived and seemingly powerless beings, but he couldn't say he related to humans perfectly.
He had been a Shinigami for some time, carrying the mark of 'Rukongai trash' when he had grown up as an orphan a second time in Rukongai before that, more so in Shin'ō Academy, but the citizens of Rukongai treated him oddly after his entrance in the Gotei 13, even in the districts he once roamed; he had traveled in the Living World for a century without aging, forced from Seireitei after being exposed to a dangerous artifact and his being changed into that which was most hated by his former comrades; his life in the Elemental Nations was not at all normal, scorned and spat upon as a demon during childhood which turned to admiration and exalted as a hero in the midst of his adolescence, always a rebel and troublemaker whether as an Academy student or as a shinobi.
Naruto had never been 'normal'. A neglected, shunned, and 'demonic' orphan, a mischievous prankster, a troublemaking rebellious mercenary, a charismatic, low-ranked hero, a vaunted and respected, yet somehow peaceful dictator, a thieving and homeless orphan, a spat upon and hated activist, an annoying piece of 'Rukongai trash,' a diligent, yet somehow suspicious Shinigami bounced around far too much, a hybrid monster, or just a traveling hermit; Naruto was and had been all these things, but 'normal' was quite in his rolodex of titles.
It was because of all of that he had been, he had reveled in his time traveling as a 'human,' impressed, if not all that mystified, by the achievements of all these humans whose chakra reserves were less than even a single kikaichū of an infant Aburame.
The people of the Elemental Nations may have spent some millennium or two in savage warfare that reshaped the landscape an unbelievable number of times, but they had done so without the technology of the present, and their technology had advanced so quickly due to the aid and understanding of their chakra pools, ones so large that the chakra pool of an average civilian child from Naruto's time was the equivalent of a freakin' Bijū compared to those of the most physically powerful of humans.
In the wake of what Orochimaru alone could accomplish in a mere three decades, it was incredible to see how the populous people of the Living World could come up with such innovative technology to further their growth, the majority of which was done in the past century, all with the absolute bare minimum amount of chakra needed to merely survive.
Eventually, despite a lack of conscious, his feet led him to the doorstep of a small, two-story house with an offset, attached portion. He hadn't meant to arrive at his destination, had disappeared for more than half a decade shortly after the attack on the mother and son of the Kurosaki family.
Before he knew it, the side door reserved for family members had opened, his feet planting themselves mere inches away from their doorstep, lost in his nostalgic daze for evidently too long.
Still, he held out some hope. Children often forgot names and faces of even their most precious family members if they disappeared for too long. The girls had been what? Four? Five maybe? Definitely too young to remember his handsome face. Ichigo had been older, ten, maybe, but the kid seemed to have changed quite a bit, if the racket he heard last night was to be believed.
Just because Naruto had a rather crisp memory of faces of his childhood, both times, didn't mean the Kurosaki children would. His childhoods had been different, too filled with loneliness, interspersed with sneers and glares and rejection, or much too filled with hard times that were just plain forgetful. The Kurosaki home was filled with much more love than his childhood apartment had ever been, even without their mother's presence.
Though the strawberry-boy did seem to have kept Naruto's habit of witty nicknames (and they were witty, no matter Yoruichi-chan said about the matter. If she didn't like hers, then she could up with one that didn't involve so many damn syllables. Seriously, who would ever call someone by a nickname three times as long as their name?).
Geta-Bōshi, though. How did that one slip past Naruto's notice? Still, he was willing to swallow his pride and call Kisuke by that; his little nephew had won the rights to that nickname and he was alright with that.
When the door opened, he saw a flash of light blonde hair, confused brown eyes meeting his own for a moment as she held up a spatula. The moment passed, her eyes widening slightly before he felt her head collide with his stomach, thin arms wrapping tightly around his waist.
"Whiskers-oji-san!" a muffled cry came, soft, dark brown eyes peering up at him with a happy, if slightly tearful, smile. "You came back! I missed you so much!"
Whatever hope he held out for the Kurosaki family's forgetfulness was shattered as the little blonde more than a foot shorter than him took his hand and dragged him down the hall and announced his presence. He couldn't help but feel a mixture of amusement and irritation at her scolding him for not taking his shoes off at the door when she had yanked him away from the doormat.
Well, Naruto thought, an apologetic grin on his face while internally amused at the fact that an eleven-year-old Yuzu was berating him like her and Karin's four-year-old selves used to for his disappearance and lack of visiting, along with Karin's deadpan expression that did little to hide her amusement and Isshin's comical crying as the man prostrated himself in front of a giant, blown up picture of his wife's face. Perhaps this isn't so bad.
When Ichigo ambled down the stairs, the boy took one look at his mischievous grin as he loosened his jaw, jumped the railing and planted a foot in his face, a small blush on the teen's face.
"So mean to your beloved uncle, little Berry-chan!" Naruto shouted from his place on the ground.
He could've sworn the boy knew Shunpo with how quick Ichigo was to plant his other foot in face as well.
Still worth it, Naruto thought to himself with a grin as the boy almost his height shook him violently with a blush on his face.