Chapter 213: Different People
To the Shinigami, the Naruto world might as well have been a fever dream.
There was no stable structure to speak of, no clear cycle that maintained balance, no order accepted by all. Compared to the rigid framework of the Soul King system, everything in that world felt like an unsteady mirage, a mad struggle born from chaos that never truly settled.
Peace should not have been this hard, should it?
If there was a strongest, then the strongest would hold the sky up, and everyone else would live beneath it. If there was no strongest, then people would gather, trade benefits, negotiate survival, and keep each other in check. How could things rot into endless slaughter?
The Shinigami did not understand the thinness of a ninja's life, a life where the average lifespan barely reached the thirties. The ninjas, in turn, could not understand why the Shinigami seemed so indifferent to suffering and despair that happened right beside them.
If peace and the future could vanish at any moment because of someone's whims, then what was the difference between that and war?
That was why ninjas and Shinigami could not truly understand each other.
They could borrow each other's strengths. They could study each other's abilities. They could even admire one another from a distance.
But their cores would never fully overlap.
On one side were parasites feasting on the corpses of the exalted. On the other were miserable slaves, minds twisted by conditioning, trapped in a battlefield that never ended. From a third person view, it was hard to say which fate was cleaner, which was more disgusting, which was more hopeless.
"…But I think they are very energetic."
Aizen's voice was calm, almost mild.
Urahara's eyes narrowed slightly. "Energetic?"
"Yes," Aizen said. "Vitality. The energy of people struggling to survive."
He spoke like an ordinary storyteller, not like a man being judged, not like a man defending himself.
He did not give a neat answer. He did not seek praise. He did not ask for pity. He did not conceal what he had done in that world, nor the alterations he had made. He described it openly, as if placing his own actions on a table for dissection.
It was scrutiny.
It was self examination.
And the more he spoke, the clearer the light inside him seemed to become, as if each sentence sharpened the direction of his will.
This time, he shared the pain of the ninja world, and the dazzling moments that still managed to bloom inside it.
"Unlike here," Aizen murmured, sipping his tea while gazing at the tranquil space of spirit particles around them, "their struggle is for a better kind of survival."
"Most of them do not even know why they fight. But every one of them longs for peace. That longing becomes their hunger for power, their need to prove themselves. They are pursuers. Once they see a light, they run toward it without hesitation."
"They are mortals. If they do not eat, they die. If they bleed too much, they die. Because war never truly ends, it is difficult for them to build anything lasting."
Aizen's eyes lowered slightly.
"What is more tragic is that someone interferes from the shadows. They cannot even choose a true leader to guide them. Their candidates were corrupted long ago, altered in secret."
"Generation after generation, year after year, for thousands of years, they fought without end, watering the world with blood."
Urahara said nothing. He simply drank his tea, listening.
From Urahara's perspective, Aizen's words made a cruel kind of sense. And yet the brutality inside them left an unpleasant weight in his chest.
This was different from the Shinigami cleansing wandering spirits as part of the world's mechanics. Different from cold experiments carried out under the excuse of research. Those acts could be shameless, but they were still wrapped in the logic of balance, the logic of a system.
The Shinigami despised meaningless killing, but respected battle itself. They hated a pointless cycle of death.
What Aizen described was a cycle so raw and senseless that it offended the Shinigami's very sense of order.
And yet, Urahara could not deny the pain behind it. Thousands of years of blood, death woven into daily life, a normal person would have shattered long ago.
Urahara had not actually traveled through worlds. His question had been a pretext, a way to probe Aizen's change.
But the answer Aizen offered now made Urahara feel, strangely, as if he himself was the one standing on the wrong side of something.
"It was a heartbreaking world," Aizen said quietly. "A world where boys who were ten years old could already kill cleanly."
He did not raise his voice. He did not dramatize it. That made it worse.
"At an age when children should still be spoiled by their parents, they already understood the body's weaknesses. They trained to strike vital points. Even girls were forced to learn how to use their bodies to survive. Children under ten, some as young as three or four, began practicing for the battlefield."
"Adults and minors killed each other without hesitation, weapons driven into hearts. During the short spans of peace, they did not heal, they merely stockpiled strength and anger, so they could restart the cycle again."
"In their lives, there was no true education, no culture for its own sake. Learning existed to make weapons sharper, to make killing easier."
"And even death did not offer release."
Aizen's fingers tightened around the cup for the briefest moment, then relaxed.
"There is no Soul Society waiting for them. Their souls are gathered, summoned by forbidden techniques, dragged back into endless battle. Brothers kill brothers. Sons kill fathers. The dead are pushed forward by spells and manipulation."
Aizen's gaze grew distant.
"I could not accept it. Not when I was living inside it."
"But at first, I did not dare to move too boldly. From what I remembered, that world held figures strong enough to break ecosystems, strong enough to ruin a planet's balance with their hands. That tragedy was the result of their actions."
His mouth curved slightly, without humor.
"It turned out I had feared too much. But at the time, I had no choice. I did what I believed I was supposed to do."
He continued, and Urahara could tell he was not lying. With Aizen's current power, lies were unnecessary. Lies were for people who still needed permission.
The world that had once been an abyss, in Aizen's narration, began to rise. A hopeless war became something closer to competition. By dissecting chakra's nature and tracing the stories tied to it, the world moved toward something like redemption.
It was only a few decades.
But to Aizen, it was irreplaceable.
Because in that time, he gained enough to step out of the cage of self pity. He discovered that others also moved through darkness, that allies could be forged, that simply knowing he was not alone could be a joy sharp enough to cut through despair.
In a twisted way, he even felt fortunate.
If he had landed in a world that offered him no power, no path, a place where even the universe itself rejected him, what could he have done?
So yes, he was fortunate, in his own strange, bitter sense of the word.
He did not intend to be a good man.
He intended to resolve the problems in front of him in the way that made sense to him.
That included Soul Society.
That included Urahara, the man he had once considered capable of understanding him, the man Aizen now believed should not waste his life inside a decaying cage.
"That is why I came," Aizen said.
"At first, I did nothing. I was confused about what I even was."
His voice stayed level, but the content carried a quiet weight.
"Am I Aizen Sōsuke from that world, regaining memories through a dream? Am I a middle aged man from another world, who traveled while reading a manga? Or am I in a hazy illusion in the abyss, after the Thousand Year Blood War ended?"
"At first, I could not tell."
"Yet all of it was true."
"It was true that I lived in an orphanage in the Naruto world. It was true that I carried memories from other times. I knew I was in that world. And I could still use my soul and my abilities, I could release Kido, I could wield a Zanpakuto."
Aizen paused, then spoke as if making a verdict on himself.
"After months of chaos, I understood something. No matter what my true nature is, no matter what my appearance is, I am who I am now."
"A person's personality and actions can be shaped by memories and events," he said. "So yes. I am a different person now than I was before."
Urahara stood at the edge of the dojo, a black cat cradled in his arms. His expression was indifferent, unreadable.
Maybe Aizen was telling the truth.
But for the victim, truth was not automatically forgiveness.
And Aizen had no interest in pleading for forgiveness anyway.
From the beginning, he was speaking for himself, unilaterally, arrogantly, fully embodying the egotism that was his true nature. He did not ask for agreement. He simply declared what he believed.
"I learned that different worlds exist," Aizen continued. "I learned that completely different people can live, choose differently, and still arrive at lives they can understand. I even learned that in some universes, there may be people lonelier than me."
"At least I am certain of this. Even if our paths differ, you, Kiryu Hikifune, Mayuri Kurotsuchi, all of you are people who can see the truth."
His eyes sharpened.
"But what about everyone else?"
"In worlds without even the most basic supernatural ability, I cannot help but admire true sages. How did they carve out civilization from darkness? Even now, I cannot face it without feeling small."
"So I think people should not confine themselves to narrow spaces and pretend the world beyond does not exist."
Aizen's smile returned, gentle, and utterly self certain.
"I want a brighter, more brilliant future."
"Even if I must use certain methods, I will make what I believe is good happen in the world I live in."
"Call me arrogant. Call me tyrannical. If I think it is good, I will make it happen."
"Just like now."
"I think the Soul King system is wrong, so I introduced chakra to break this restrictive order. I think the arrival of the Naruto world is good, so I left traces and coordinates."
Urahara's fingers stroked the black cat's fur in a slow rhythm.
Then he asked, calmly, "So you will not consider the consequences?"
His voice was quiet, but it carried weight.
"I care about many things. Yoruichi, the Shinigami, the Visored, Soul Society. Can you guarantee they will not be affected?"
Aizen's smile deepened slightly.
"Certainly."
Then he spoke again, and the true answer followed immediately after the bait, as if he enjoyed the contrast.
"I cannot guarantee anything," Aizen said. "I am only an agent of change. What happens after change begins is no longer my concern. I will be leaving on a long journey."
"The world may not like me," he continued, "but I still gave it a gift."
His gaze rested on Urahara.
"The ones who open that gift, and decide what it becomes, are you."
Urahara's eyes cooled.
"Complete egoism," he said. "That is why I dislike your methods."
Aizen did not flinch.
"I do not need approval or recognition," he replied. "I am simply doing what I want."
Then he turned his head slightly, calling toward a corner that seemed empty.
"Ichigo. It is time to go."
A figure shifted in the shadows, and Kurosaki Ichigo stepped out, his expression tense, eyes fixed forward as if he had been holding his breath for the entire conversation.
"Today is the second time we will show ourselves to Seireitei," Aizen said. "You may choose whether or not to rescue Rukia Kuchiki. That choice is yours."
Ichigo's jaw tightened.
"Oh, but it seems like things are not finished in Rukongai yet," he said, voice uncertain.
"It does not matter," Aizen replied. "As long as we win, they will follow. Most people do not care about the future or the past. But victory, real victory, gives them proof that they are still alive."
He set the empty cup down.
"That is enough."
Ichigo exhaled, then nodded.
"Okay," he said. "I understand."
He glanced once at the silent Urahara, a small apology in his eyes, then followed Aizen out of the dojo.
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