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Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or Naruto or any other licensed anime. This is just for fun

Also I apologize in advance for how short this chapter is.

After somewhat reluctantly leaving the shop Naruto quickly made his way back to the now rather cramped apartment. He knew that other Shinigami would need to be placated somewhat and he also still had to assign them patrol areas. Fortunately, the place wasn't too far from Urahara Shoten, so he manged to get there in just a few quick Flash Steps.

With a soft woosh he appeared in front of the door, and the light chatter he could just barely discern through the wood immediately died away.
"I'm back," he called, somewhat awkwardly as he walked inside, and was was immediately met with half a dozen glaring eyes. He frowned briefly at their attitude, then schooled his own expression, he understood their frustration.

"Mind telling us what the hell that was all about?" demanded Captain Hitsugaya rudely.

Naruto faced the young Captain, his cerulean eyes boring into the white haired shinigami's own turquoise orbs, "I believe I told you earlier, that my business with Uruhara Kisuke was private," he said flatly. "This business as yet, does not concern you or your mission."

Hitsugaya was about to say something more, but Naruto, who had grown even more annoyed, finally flared his reiatsu startling everyone present. " Enough," he said, "I do not answer to you Captain," he said pointedly emphasizing the others' title.

Toshiro Hitsugaya gritted his teeth, it galled him to be spoken to with disrespect, however he stayed silent, Commander Naruto was right after all.

After reigning in both his reiatsu and temper, Naruto turned to the others and addressed them as a whole. "We need to figure out who should patrol what area of the city, and we have to make sure we can all contact each other in case of an emergency."

Despite their indignation at being so firmly rebuked, the remaining Shinigami nodded, wisely deciding not to push the issue or the blond any further.

A week or so later

Underneath an abandoned Karakura warehouse there was an impossibly large training room that ex-Captain Urahara Kisuke had built just a few weeks previously. The "room" if it even could be called such, resembled an empty wasteland, stretched out seemingly for miles, and even came equipped with an artificial sun and sky.

The only way someone could tell that the room wasn't actually outside was from the unnatural quiet and the lack of clouds. Naruto, when he had first entered the place, had deduced that Urahara was using some kind of dimensional expansion, but still hadn't figured out how it worked.

Here this secret training room a fierce battle raged between two blond figures; repeatedly clashed high in the air, the shriek of steel meeting steel continually ringing as they clashed in a beautiful dance. Every so often one of the fighters would distance themselves, and suddenly burning energy attacks, and waves of fire and lightning would roar across the sky.

Neither Naruto not Hioyri could tell how long they'd been at it, but they both sported fierce smiles. Suddenly the flow of the battle changed, and when the two Zanpakuto locked again, they didn't immediately spring away from each other, instead keeping their blades pressed together.

"Why don't we kick this up a notch, Hiyori taunted as she stared right into her returned love's eyes. "All right, but no complaining if you get hurt Hiyori-chan," Naruto replied, somewhat cheekily.

She growled in response and brutally kicked him as hard as she could in the gut. He wasn't supposed to call her that in public. Surprised by his girlfriend's unorthodox attack Naruto was caught off guard and he crashed into the ground hard.

Dazed from the crash, it took him a second to clear his head, and in those few moments Hiyori's reiryoku level spiked, her reiatsu signature changing; it became darker and felt heavier as it became intermixed with that of her Inner-Hollow.

Hiyori stood in the sky wrapped in an aura of pink and black reiatsu, with a bone white mask covering her face. The mask sported large purple diamond-like markings across the brow, and featured a rather prominent horn, looking very much like a rhinoceros. "Get ready," she said, her voiced distorted as if there were two of her speaking at once, although with one voice at a much deeper pitch. It was disconcerting to say in the least.

Glancing at sky Naruto looked at the now Hollowfied girl, and while even though he knew it was still Hiyori, and he still loved her beyond words, he couldn't help but feel a tiny twinge of fear. Then the moment passed and he brushed that fear aside as he focused.

Before he could move forward, she vanished from sight, reappearing directly behind him a second later. With a speed borne from years of practice, Naruto spun around and managed to get his blade up in time to block her two-handed overhead slash. At close range, Naruto could see that the sclera of Hiyori's eyes were an inky black, and her pupils burned gold. Just like Ichigo's had when they'd fought a few weeks ago.

He let his reiryoku augment his muscles and in a frankly inhuman display of strength, he pushed Hiyori aside, and immediately Flash Stepped away.

Hiyori recovered quickly, immediately searching for Naruto, but the other blond was nowhere in sight. "Where are you?," she growled. "Up here," came the unexpected reply from above, and she swore she could hear the smile on his face.

"What?" she asked, startled as she looked up and saw Naruto standing about twenty feet above her head, with an energy sphere in his palm. The attack was glowing with intense yellow light, and was aimed at right her head. "Hadō 32: Ōkasen,"he bellowed; from his palm a wide curving arc of energy blasted forward.

"Shit!," she screeched as she saw the incoming attack. Forcing as much spirit energy in to her arms as she could, she brought her sealed sword around to bear, just in time to keep from being bifurcated by Naruto's cutting spell. The energy attack pushed against her Zanpakutō with titanic force, inexorably forcing her to her knees. After nearly 15 seconds, the energy finally waned

"Ready to give up?"Naruto taunted jovially from above when his spell finally died away. "The hell I am," she roared, suddenly catching her second wind, ad blurring away in an instant with a sharp bzzzt.

"What the..." Naruto had just enough time think, before Hiyori appeared inside his guard, landing a punch to his gut so hard that it knocked the wind clean out of him. That wasn't a Flash Step. he thought sluggishly as he fell.

"You wanna play rough?" Hiyori growled, "That's fine by me." She lowered her head, pointing the tip of he mask's horn down.

After crash landing on the ground for the second time in 5 minutes, Naruto gasped as he forced the air back into his lungs. After finally shaking off his disorientation, he turned back to his opponent, only to find her charging a menacing orb of red light on the tip of her mask's horn.

"No way," Naruto breathed in awe, as he recognized the technique, "You guys can fire off real Cero?"

A Cero, was a technique used exclusively by powerful Hollows. It took the form of an immensely powerful blast, or sphere of concentrated Hollow spiritual energy, and the more power one put in the more powerful the blast.

From where he stood, he could tell the amount of power Hiyori pumped into her Cero greatly exceeded the spell he'd just used on her.

Hiyori ginned wickedly under her mask, he augmented hearing picking up what he'd said. "Oh yeah," she suddenly laughed. That was all the warning Naruto got as she unleashed the immensely destructive Hollow attack. In seconds the small orb exploded into into a truly massive beam of fiery crimson energy.

Naruto had just barely had time to defend himself, but thankfully a few seconds before the Cero struck he surrounded himself in purple barrier. The technique was formed from translucent overlapping honey comb "plates." When the crimson Cero hit, it was with enough concussive force to literally shatter the ground he was standing on, pulverizing a good chunk of the ground into dust. Thankfully, his barrier, but very quickly cracks started to appear in several of the plates.

Hiyori's attack was ridiculously strong, he marveled. With a grunt he pushed even more power into his barrier and weathered the assault, but it actually took a fair bit of his power to do so. Mercifully Hiyori couldn't sustain the attack forever, and eventually both the barrier and the Cero exploded, each sending a massive cloud of dust blasting high into the air.

'"Take that," panted Hiyori as she slowly floated to the ground. She had pumped a ton of reiryoku into the Cero and was exhausted from the effort. Focusing on her boyfriend's reiatsu signature, she was pleased to note that currently his reserves were lower than her own; confident that he was bested, she let her mask disintegrate. "I win," she declared proudly. Unfortunately her assumption was her undoing.

"Hadō 4: Byakurai*," said Naruto, his voice drifting out of the cloud faintly, followed b weak, thin beam of white lightning. Caught completely off guard, she knocked her flat on her ass a good twenty feet away, although she was a little singed she was otherwise unharmed.

The dust cloud finally settled, revealing Naruto lying on his belly, both his hair and clothes lightly singed, with a wide grin on his face, "I think we can call this one a tie," he said with smile. As a reply Hiyori slowly raised her right arm and flipped him off. Naruto chuckled before he dragged himself to his feet and shuffled over to her.

As he dropped down next to her, Hiyori shifted around so her head was laying in his stomach. "Well that was fun," he murmured as he absently ran his fingers through her hair. "Yeah," it was she agreed. "You've gotten so strong Hiyori-chan," he continued, "It's amazing."

She smirked, "Not all of us were Kidō geniuses, you know." I've worked my butt off to be able to control this power." Naruto nodded, "It's incredible," he said, "How does that all work?" A pained look crossed her face, and Naruto immediately flinched, guilt welling up, "I'm so sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean it like that." He realized that what he'd just asked her would have been like asking him what it was like using the Kyubi's power when he was alive.

She cut his apology off, "It's OK dumb ass." She sighed contentedly as she settled in deeper, "I'll tell you all about it someday, just not right now ya know?"

Naruto nodded, and idly continued playing with her hair. "What are you thinking about?" he asked a few moments later, but she replied with something completely unintelligible as she drifted off to sleep.

Naruto smiled and after a time he joined her in the land of dreams, happier than he had been in decades.

{Later}

Naruto's eyes snapped open as two absolutely massive reiatsu signatures had suddenly materialized in the far most northern part of Karakura Town. The beings emitting the powerful signatures were obviously very strong and from the faintly malevolent aura he could sense, they were probably hostile. He briefly wondered what kind of beings possessed so much power that he could sense them this far away,

He immediately exploded into motion, hauling himself up and running out of the training room as fast as he could, shouting an apology at a rather irate Hiyori, upset at her "pillow's" rude exit. He passed by the other Vaizard in the warehouse but didn't stop to communicate, there was no time.

Focusing his senses on the new threat, the moment he was out of the warehouse, he Flash Stepped north, heading straight towards enemy. As he traveled he felt Ichigo's reiastu rapidly moving across the city; the substitute-shinigami was much closer. He also sensed the other shinigami moving in from their patrol areas.

He he allowed himself to feel a small measure of relief when he sensed Ichigo arrive in the potential enemy location, but a short time later the sense of relief died as he suddenly felt Ichigo release his Bankai.

He knew the mortal teen wouldn't have done so with out a very good reason. As he continued flash-speed moving, he felt Ichigo's reiatsu signature fluctuate, the boys normal bright and warm reiatsu spiked strongly, then morphed into a dark and oppressive power, then it switched back. He was Hollowfying again.

"Shit," he cursed, forcing himself to move even faster. For a few moments longer, he could still feel Ichigo's reiatsu signature fluctuating, but then it dropped to a dangerously low level, while one of the enemy's power swelled above Captain level. It took less than a minute longer for him to be within sight of the situation, but it wasn't good. They were in a city park of some kind, and there were many mortals were lying around the place, all unmoving

Ichigo lay on the ground bruised and battered before a bald, giant of a man, who sported the broken remnants of a hollow mask on the lower part of his face. He noted that Ichigo had managed to cut off one of the giant's arms, as it lay in the grass between them.

Behind the giant, a smaller figure stood silent, his emerald eyes totally empty of emotion, that one had messy black hair, pale white skin, a black upper lip, and green eyes with twin facial markings in the form of teal lines which descended to his chin.

The smaller man also sported the remnants of a hollow mask, this one looking rather like a helmet, on the left side of his head. Both enemies were wearing a white jacket, with black sash, and a white hakama. It was like an eerie reverse of the Shinigami uniform. Naruto knew immediately that these beings were the so called Arrancar.

As the giant man moved to deliver the final strike against the prone Ichigo, Naruto acted, casting a barrier spell as he moved faster than sight "Bakudō 81 Danku*," he whispered as he Flash Stepped directly in front of Ichigo. A translucent wall of light materialized a second later, completely nullifying the giant's attack.

"Phew, that was close," he said to Ichigo casually, while the giant took a step back yelling in pain as he cradled his hand. "Sorry I'm so late," he continued talking to themortal youth as he dismissed the barrier, "But you see I got lost on the road of life, as a friend of mine used to say."

"Che, more and more people keep butting in," the giant man suddenly interrupted. Naruto frowned in confusion and looked around more closely. Sure enough there among the unconscious and possibly dead people around, were Inoue Orihime, Sado Yatsutora, and another one of Ichigo's friends from school.

"Well now, it was you who did this?" Naruto asked softly rage welling up, the giant arrancar couldn't tell, but there was now a dangerous edge to his tone.

"Hell yeah I did," the man roared, "And you're next!" He moved to attack once more, but by then Naruto was already gone.

"You know, I hate guys like you," said Naruto, his voice coming from behind his opponent. The giant whirled around, but instantly found himself wrapped in chains."Tetsu no Kusari." Naruto glared at his opponent silently for a second before drawing his sword, "Sit between the Darkness and the Light: Twilight Heart," he chanted as he ran his left palm along the flat of the Zanpakutō.

The Arrancars watched as the sword was outlined with an almost blinding white light, which then quickly faded to a deep black, as the blade shattered into hundreds of glowing black and white particles. The black orbs flowed over right arm, the white surrounded his left. A heartbeat after his Armor-type shikai was released, the giant Arrancar flared his own dark crimson reiatsu, and shattered the chains binding him. "Like some weak ass technique is gonna stop me," he growled.

Naruto didn't deign to respond, but instead acted. Moving at super human speed, he slipped right under the giants guard, and delivered a brutal uppercut to his opponent's stomach, one that strong enough to actually lift the huge Arrancar off it's feet. A second later the blond shinigami was gone, this time appearing from thin air behind his opponents head, and axe kicked him, forcing the enemy to his knees.

For a second Naruto stood behind his enemy, looking like an avenging angel of death, as he stretched out his right metal-clad index finger. A small ball of fire, about four inches in diameter, materialized on the tip of his finger, and then he leveled it at the back of his enemies head, execution style.
"Hadō 46: Bāningu Kiba," he said coldly.

Before anything could happen, a pale slender arm quickly pushed Naruto's own arm straight up, and the spell he had been about to fire, whistled as it rocketed into the sky before flying out of sight.

The arm belonged to the second Arrancar, who up until then had done nothing, who had defended the giant . Naruto was actually quite surprised, as he hadn't sensed the second's Arrancar's approach at all. This other Arrancar's emerald eyes bored into Naruto's cerulean orbs and from up close Naruto could see that he possessed slit pupils, much like a cat. Then the heretofore silent one suddenly disappeared from Naruto's sight sharp bzzt; and a second later the larger Arracar was gone too, it seemed that the giant was deceptively fast for his size.

Surprised, Naruto whirled around, only to spot the two enemies already a fair distance away. "Come, Yammy it's time to go," ordered the green-eyed Arrancar finally speaking for the first time since Naruto arrived.

"What the hell are you going on about, Ulquiorra?" demanded the one known as Yammy, "I can take care of these weaklings." Naruto quickly committed their names to memory for his report.

"Fool," replied the one known as Ulquiorra flatly, "That's Uzumaki Naruto right in front of you, in your current form he'll annihilate you." Yammy frowned, but he knew Ulquiorra was probably right." Ulquiorra traced a horizontal line in the air with his right finger, and a strange black line appeared. The line quickly started growing, before widening, forming the same hollow technique, the Garganta that Aizen had used to escape Soul Society.

"Oh, running away," prodded Naruto sarcastically as he watched, "And why should I let you go?" "Such provocation is unnecessary, Uzumaki Naruto," replied Ulquiorra blandly. "It's obvious that you can't fight the two of us, and protect the trash around you." Naruto scowled, but didn't move to attack. The implicit threat to the unconscious mortals was clear.

As the Garganta silently enveloped the two Arracar Ulquiorra spoke again, his words directed towards the injured Ichigo. "I'm going to go report in to Aizen-sama." He said, "I will tell him that the Substitute-Shinigami he had his eyes set on is trash that isn't even worth killing." He looked at Naruto once more, "You on the other hand..." he trailed off as the Garganta slipped shut.

At that moment the other Shinigami who were stationed in Karakura finally arrived, "Are you two alright?" cried out Rukia, even as she rushed only to Ichigo

Naruto mentally dismissed his Shikai which reformed into his katana, and sheathed it before responding, "I'm fine," he said tiredly, "But some of you need to take care of Ichigo and his friends."

[A few days later]

Things had finally calmed down around Karakura Town, nothing out of the ordinary had happened since the Arrancar known as Ulquiorra and Yammy had visited. Naruto had dutifully given his report to Yamamoto and was instructed to continue with his responsibilities. All of the Shinigami made sure they were prepared for anything, but even so after days of nothing happening, people tend to get lax.

So it was understandable how six Arrancar, all of whom were strongly suppressing their power, managed to slip into Karakura Town late one night.

There you have it, the latest chapter of Kidōchō Redux. As you guys can see the plot thickens...
As always please leave a review, telling me what you think. Constructive criticism is ok, I welcome any opportunity to improve my writing, but no flames. If you don't like my work don't read it.

Now for a listing of special terms

Fash steps : a high speed movement technique that allows the user to move faster than the eye can follow, training and skill are what determines how fast a user of Shunpo can move. It is very similar to the ninja technique Shushin

Hadō 32 Ōkasen, (Yellow Fire Flash): Fires a wide arc of yellow energy at a target, capable of cutting through most solid objects.

Cero" a powerful blast of concentrated Hollow spiritual energy, that takes the form of a sphere or beam of destructive power. Used by high level Hollows, Arrancar, and Vizard

Hadō 4: Byakurai, (Pale/White Lightning): A rather simple, low lever spell, where the user fires a concentrated electric bolt from their fingers. The spell can become quite lethal if it's over charged or modified

Bakudō 81 : Danku (Splitting Void): An energy barrier that takes the form of a rectangular wall of light, capable of stopping immensely powerful destructive spells up to level 89

Hadō 46 Bāningu Kiba (Burning Fang) A powerful projectile energy spell that takes the form of a large animal fang made of fire. When released it both pierces and burns the victim (note this is a spell of my own creation)