Chapter Text
Waking up in Soul Society, in what looks to be the middle of nowhere, had been a little bit of a surprise, considering Ichigo had gone to bed in his own room back in Karakura. Especially waking up with both Zangetsu and his hollow back in his head like it’s no big deal, like he hasn’t been missing them every damn day for months.
And that’s just the beginning.
His reiatsu is there, like Aizen and Mugetsu never happened. His bankai is back, his hollow mask is back, his memories are seemingly all fine. As far as Ichigo can tell, there’s nothing wrong with him. Everything is okay, except for the fact that he willingly tore his soul in half over a year ago to defeat a madman and none of this should be possible.
Is he dead?
It might be a weird thing to say, but Ichigo doesn’t feel dead. Considering everything he’s been through, he likes to think he would be able to tell if he were. But what other reason could there be for him to suddenly end up in Soul Society with his powers back? He’s not even in his shinigami clothing, instead dressed in a muted green yukata with Zangetsu just laying next to him on the ground.
It’s all seriously strange, even considering Ichigo’s distinctly higher-than-normal tolerance for weird shit.
But Ichigo is nothing if not good at adapting (he’s had a lot of practice), so he accepts that being in Rukongai and having his powers back is apparently a thing and rolls with it, because what else can he do? Denial or panic won’t do him any good.
Deciding to play it safe, he spends three days in the same clearing he woke up in. But nobody or nothing shows up to explain what is going on, and he doesn’t fall asleep and wake up back in his own room in Karakura either, so on the third day, Ichigo figures he’s waited long enough and goes looking for people.
Learning that he’s somehow ended up about a hundred years in the past is admittedly quite shocking, even considering the situation he's currently in.
Because when he finally makes it to a village, the nice older lady he meets mentions Captain Shihouin Yoruichi of the 2nd Division and newly appointed Captain Urahara Kisuke of the 12th Division and Ichigo damn near has a heart attack because what the fuck?
He beats a strategic retreat and gives himself the rest of the day to freak out about whatever is going on and how it could have happened. Then he goes to sleep, wakes up, and forces himself to consider the repercussions his presence might have on the future. It’s quite a long and extensive list, even with Ichigo’s limited grasp of the situation. This is exactly the kind of thing Urahara would have taken care of for him, normally, and Ichigo would’ve only had to listen to a very short and summarized version.
But Urahara isn’t here — or he is, apparently, but not the right one? God, that’s gonna take some time to wrap his head around — and Ichigo isn’t about to just sit there and twiddle his thumbs while Aizen slinks around somewhere, up to no good and generally being a bastard.
He will not let Urahara, Yoruichi, Tessai and the Visoreds go through the whole mess of hollowfication, betrayal and exile again when he has the ability to stop it. (As long as he doesn’t go to sleep one day and wakes up back in Karakura, which is still a possibility but he’s not counting on it.)
So Aizen has to die. All Ichigo needs to do is figure out how to make that happen.
There’s a lot of things to figure out.
Killing Aizen is all well and good, and Ichigo can’t imagine that being a problem when Aizen is a hundred years younger and not even fused with the hogyoku. But there are other things he needs in order for that to happen, like access to Seireitei, food and shelter, and preferably a way to get close to Aizen without ending up in jail (or killed, because Ichigo have exactly zero percent trust in Central 46 after the mess with Rukia’s execution and the whole chamber getting slaughtered by Aizen in the first place).
He will fight his way through the entire Gotei 13 if he needs to, but only as the absolute last resort, if for no other reason that the damage to both people and surroundings would be massive, and he really doesn’t want to fight any of his friends anyway — even if none of them know him yet.
After a few more days, food and shelter rises to the top of the list because being wet and hungry is getting boring fast.
Ichigo goes back to the village where he’d talked to the nice lady the first time, hoping she might have some advice; he has literally no idea what to do. He is completely clueless about how things work in Rukongai, though it can be argued that his knowledge of Seireitei or Soul Society as a whole isn’t any better. He barely has a grasp on how the Gotei 13 functions, never mind the rest of the place.
Food and shelter turns out to be an easy fix though, when Ichigo learns that the people in this and nearby villages are being plagued by hollows. The villagers are more than willing to share whatever they can spare if he gets rid of them. And since that is both a ridiculously easy task and also kind of Ichigo’s duty as a shinigami to begin with — even if he only is a substitute one — of course he accepts.
So he moves into a tiny, abandoned shed in the woods surrounding the village and gets to work.
The hollows are easily dealt with. It only takes Ichigo a day or two to get rid of everything in easy shunpo-distance in all directions, and then all he has to do is occasionally check to make sure they don't return.
The constant hunger is a bigger problem.
Ichigo doesn’t know what district of Rukongai he’s in, but the houses and clothes make it pretty clear that he’s a long way from Seireitei. As the first person here in decades with enough reiatsu to actually feel hungry, food is pretty much non-existent. The villagers do their best to help him, and Ichigo is very grateful, but he has not been full since he woke up here and it doesn't look like that's gonna change anytime soon.
He’ll manage, though. He's dealt with worse over the years.
And when he finds himself with nothing but time on his hands, no hollows to kill and no people to help, he takes the opportunity to do something he never got around to trying the first time around.
Getting to know his hollow.
It’s slow going. Despite everything that has happened, Aizen’s defeat and the subsequent loss of his powers and even waking up here in the past, his hollow still tries to kill him on sight and refuses to listen to anything he says. It just keeps yammering on about taking control of his body and becoming the king. Any and all of Ichigo’s attempts to talk are wholly ignored.
But if the hollow thinks it can outlast Ichigo in a competition of tenacity, it’s gonna be sorely disappointed. Not giving up is Ichigo’s specialty and he is absolutely adamant in sticking this one out. (Honestly, it also doesn’t hurt that all the fighting is increasing his own skill with Zangetsu. It’s no secret that Ichigo’s victories have always relied more on raw power and brute force than any technique or proficiency with the sword. If that’s something he can work on while also wearing down his hollow, that’s two birds with one stone as far as he is concerned.)
He won't lie and say that he didn’t hate and fear the hollow in equal measure when it first appeared. He’d been terrified. He’d been angry. He’d been desperate. Getting help from the Visoreds, no matter how little he trusted them at the time, had been like a rope thrown his way while he was drowning.
But his hollow is as much a part of him as old man Zangetsu, and Ichigo isn’t interested in spending the rest of his life fighting himself at every turn. Not when he now has a chance to do it differently. This time, he has more knowledge, more confidence, and more time, which is arguably the most important. He’s not gonna back down.
In the end, nobody back home would have been surprised to learn that Ichigo eventually out-stubborns himself. He names the hollow “Shiro”, because continuing to call him “you” or “hollow” is lame and rude and Ichigo was actually raised to have some manners. (He just doesn’t care to use them most of the time.)
And even with that obstacle taken care of, Ichigo still has lots more time to kill, so “hollow befriended: ✓” is followed by the next item on his admittedly short list of Things He Didn’t Have Time To Learn The First Time Around But Wants To Learn Now: control.
Because, see, Ichigo doesn’t really buy the whole “he’s got too much so he can’t control it” spiel.
Yes, he’s got quite a lot of reiatsu. But so does Urahara, and Kyouraku, and Shinji, and Yamamoto, and even freaking Aizen, and none of them are going around leaking reiatsu like the shinigami equivalent of a sieve. Besides, how can he ever hope to get into Seireitei without causing a massive commotion if he strolls in bleeding reiatsu strong enough to flatten anyone below lieutenant-level? That’s a sure-fire way to absolutely catch Aizen or Yamamoto or Central 46’s attention.
Sure, the captains have hundreds of years of experience on him, but Ichigo has never been bothered to do things in Soul Society-tempo before and he’s definitely not planning to start now. (Decades to learn bankai? Yeah, no thanks.)
If they can do it, there’s no reason he can’t do it too. He just needs to figure out how. And now he’s actually got the time to do it.
It takes him the better part of two weeks to puzzle it out on his own. Most of the time is spent discovering how to sense reiatsu in general, and then figuring out how to alter his own. By the time he’s got those two things down pat it’s pretty easy to pull it down and down and down and down until it’s completely undetectable.
Not that Ichigo would know, but old man Zangetsu had said so and he’s apparently really good at sensing reiatsu and stuff, so Ichigo takes his word for it.
And with the ability to lower his reiatsu comes the unexpected opportunity to be able to seal Zangetsu. Which is great. He hadn’t actually thought that far ahead yet, but there is no way Ichigo would have been able to walk around in Seireitei with Zangetsu strapped to his back like he used to. Not if he wants to avoid attention, because who walks around with their zanpakuto in shikai all the time? Nobody, that’s who. Especially nobody in normal, worn yukatas who aren’t proper shinigami or even part of the Gotei 13.
Now though, Ichigo has both his reiatsu under control and Zangetsu hanging sealed from his waist like any other zanpakuto, which are two things nobody would've ever thought him capable of; he feels pretty smug. Too bad nobody else is here for him to gloat to.
(Ichigo also teaches himself to skip the chant when releasing Zangetsu back to shikai, because does he want to recite a whole damn poem in the middle of battle? No thanks. Zangetsu doesn’t mind either way, so obviously the quicker the better.)
So — Ichigo found food and shelter, and he has a normal-looking zanpakuto and no discernible reiatsu. That means that all that’s left of part 1 of his plan is to get access to Seireitei. And that turns out to only take one friendly visit to the nice grandma in the neighbouring village before it’s pretty much solved as well. Ichigo can hardly believe his luck.
The yearly entrance exam to the Shinigami Academy is coming up, such a big deal that the news have even spread to his remote corner of Rukongai, and it’s open to any and all who wish to apply. It’s possibly the easiest way for Ichigo to get into Seireitei, and they even have dormitories so he wouldn’t have to travel back and forth all the time. It’s as close to perfect as he can get, most likely.
Considering his rather rushed and inconsistent training when he first became a shinigami, maybe he could even learn something at the academy. That would be pretty cool.
So only a week later, but months after he woke up here, Ichigo grabs Zangetsu and sets off. His reiatsu is so low that he should have no problems blending in with the background character shinigami, Zangetsu even hanging innocently from his belt like any other zanpakuto. All he's got left to worry about now is the upcoming test, and so Ichigo crosses his fingers and hopes the entrance exam won’t be too difficult.