[Samsara] Chapter 2 - Shihoin Chika

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Chapter 2 - Shihoin Chika

When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying down on a comfortable futon inside a well-lit room that smelt of clean, fresh air. Glancing at his surroundings, he realised that he was not alone. 

A beautiful woman in her thirties with very long black hair tied in a loose ponytail and an oval face was kneeling next to him, her hands glowing with a green light. 

“I suggest you don’t move, boy,” came her stern voice. 

Her words had the opposite effect when Naruto took in her full appearance: she was wearing the same clothes as the shinigami who had massacred his village and a white haori on top, just like the pink-haired psychopath whom he had killed. 

The futon was torn to shreds as a sphere of blue light appeared in Naruto’s right hand under the blanket. Filled with killing intent, he did not hesitate to thrust the orb of spiritual energy at the woman, straight into her chest. 

Her eyes widened in surprise, not having expected the young man to attack her the very moment he opened his eyes. 

However, Naruto’s orb of spiritual energy stopped just 5 centimetres shy of touching her. She had caught his wrist in a vice-like grip. 

“I told you not to move!”

As she held his wrist with her right hand, she smashed her left palm into his elbow. A scream of pain erupted from Naruto as the woman broke his arm. 

Despite the agonising pain, he yanked his broken arm out of her hand, and, although he was still lying on the floor, he twisted his body to throw a kick at her face. But the woman caught his leg by the shin effortlessly and threw him violently into the other side of the room, breaking the wall with his body. 

He groaned in pain and coughed up a mouthful of blood when he crashed into the courtyard outside. 

“After all the trouble I went through to heal you, now you’re injured again,” the woman spoke as though it were not she who had broken his arm from the elbow and smashed him through a wall. 

His right hand was hanging limply by his side, pulsating in pain, but Naruto gritted his teeth, and a sphere of blue light appeared once more, this time in his left hand. 

He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t know who the woman in front of him was either. But he knew one thing: she was a Shinigami. That was enough for him to want nothing more than to kill her. 

“There could be 10 of you, and you would still be unable to touch the hem of my robes,” the woman said calmly. “But if you insist on getting beaten to an inch of your life, I shall oblige.”

“Even if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll kill you all,  Shinigami!" he rasped.

Blinded by hatred, he charged at her like a mad dog, screaming. 

However, the woman’s body seemed to vanish, and a split second later, a small but firm hand grabbed him by the face and slammed his head into the ground, making a crater in it. 

He almost blacked out from the slam, but he did not relent. It was when the woman was about to let go, thinking that she had knocked him out cold, that Naruto wrapped his legs around her arm and rolled his body, locking her arm into an armbar. 

A sickening snap was heard as he returned the favour, snapping the woman’s arm from the elbow, just like she had done to him.

In spite of her arm getting broken, she did not let out as much as a grunt. It was as if she didn’t feel any pain at all. Instead, she raised her other hand at him and spoke:

“Bakudō #4. Hainawa.”

A rope of yellow light came out of her hand and slithered around Naruto’s body like a snake, tying him up from head to toe and immobilising him. 

“Had enough yet? You’re making it difficult for me not to kill you,” she said. 

Her eyes narrowed when she saw that despite the Bakudo spell immobilising him, the young man started screaming and fighting against her Kido with brute force alone. 

“I can see how you could have taken Furofushi-san out. She must’ve let her guard down, not expecting a mere Rukongai soul to be so strong. And your tenacity is like that of a beast. Unfortunately for you, boy, I already know not to underestimate you.”

Naruto had yet to break out from the binding of the yellow rope when the woman chanted:

“Carriage of thunder, bridge of a spinning wheel. With light, divide this into six. Bakudo #61: Rikujokoro.”

The rope of golden light binding Naruto flew away, transforming into six thin and wide beams of light that slammed into his waist. 



The difference between a #4 Bakudo and a #61 Bakudo was enormous. He was completely frozen, unable even to move his head anymore. 

The woman walked closer to him and placed her hand on his rage-twisted face before saying one word:

“Inemuri.”

His eyes closed against his will, and he lost consciousness. 

⁂

The next time he woke up, his surroundings were no longer as clean and as pleasant as before.

He was in a cold and dark room, sitting on a hard stone bed, the only source of light being some lamps glowing with a faint green light. 

Outside of his cell, beyond the bars, he could only see a long, dimly lit, endless corridor.



He tried to sit up by supporting himself with his hands, only to realise that he couldn’t move his arms. He was bound. His entire upper body was encased by a straitjacket, and his ankles and neck were tied down to the bed as well with chains as thick as a man’s forearm.

He struggled violently and screamed as he tried to free himself from his restraints, but every time he attempted to use his spiritual energy, the chains tied to his neck and ankles would light up and drain all his powers. 

He must have struggled and screamed for nearly 15 minutes until he finally became still, utterly exhausted by the chains that had absorbed all of his spiritual energy. 

A sudden weight appeared on his chest, and Naruto was surprised to see a black cat sitting on him, its big yellow eyes staring at him. 

“Yo. Finally done thrashing like a rabid beast?” came a deep male voice from the cat. 

“. . . Who the hell are you?”

The black cat tilted its head at him. 

“You’re a lot less surprised to hear a cat talk than I thought you’d be,” said the cat. 

“You’re not the first talking animal I’ve seen,” said Naruto. “What are you? Some summoned creature of the Shinigami?”

The cat's paw slap twisted Naruto’s head to the side. 

“What the hell did you slap me for?” he shouted. 

“I’m a who, not a what. My name is Chika.”

“Why do you have a girl name?”

The cat's voice was that of a male, a deep, sonorous voice.

“Uneducated pig, I’m a man,” Chika said in annoyance. 

The cat tried to smack him again, but Naruto somehow managed to move his head away, dodging its paw.

“If I wasn’t all tied up, I’d beat the crap out of you, stupid cat.”

“What are you so violent for, man? Why so angry?”

The nonchalant tone in which the cat was speaking filled Naruto with anger anew. 

“You are Shinigami! You were supposed to be the good guys! You were supposed to protect us! But you killed everyone! My village, you killed them all! Women, children, and the elderly—none were spared! What do you want me to do? Huh? You want me to laugh? After you killed everyone I’ve cared about? Don’t fuck with me!” he screamed, thrashing so wildly in his restraints that the cat was forced to jump off his body. 

If Kyuubi had still been with him in this life, this was one of those moments where he would have gone berserk, overcome by rage. 

Alas, he was powerless now. Kyuubi had been taken away from him long ago. And now, his spiritual energy was being sucked by the chains around his neck and ankles, leaving him helpless, unable to even sit up. 

The black cat waited until Naruto stopped struggling and screaming like a lunatic before climbing up on the stone bed again and walking on his chest. 

“You seem to harbour a grave misunderstanding,” Chika spoke in its deep male voice. “Shinigami being the good guys?”

The cat threw its head back, laughing out loud. 

“We aren’t the good guys, boy. We are neither good nor evil. We are necessary. The Gotei 13 will do whatever is necessary to preserve the balance.”

The Nine-Tailed Fox was not sealed inside of him anymore—Kaguya had ripped him out of his body—but Naruto still possessed Kurama’s Negative Emotions Sensing. Although that ability of his was not detecting any lies, he could not easily accept the cat's words. 

“What does killing innocent people have to do with the balance? What is that balance even supposed to be? Do you take me for an idiot?”

Chika sighed. 

“You don’t understand anything about the world, do you? Listen to me, for I will only explain once. Have you ever heard about the Cycle of Reincarnation?”

When Naruto didn’t reply, the cat continued:

“The world we live in has Three Realms. Human World. Soul Society. Hueco Mundo. Of course, there’s also Hell, where sinners go, but that’s a talk for another time. What is important for you to understand is that when humans die, their souls go either to Hueco Mundo, turning into Hollows, or they go to Soul Society, to this place. Once they die in this place, they will be reincarnated in the Human Realm again. This cycle repeats itself for eternity.”

“The number of souls in all three realms has to be similar, or else the world will be destroyed. That’s where we, Shinigami, come in. Our job is to maintain this balance. When things go wrong, we have no choice but to take action and resort to drastic measures.”

The cat started pacing around on his chest as he spoke.

“Your village wasn’t anything special. It was just one of the many places that were culled. Thousands of other souls were killed, sent to reincarnate into the Human Realm.”

Naruto’s face turned livid at those words, all the more so because he could not sense any lies from him. The Shinigami had truly killed thousands of other innocents!

The cat laughed at seeing how his face changed colours. 

“You’re awfully sensitive. It’s almost funny. For the life of me, I can’t understand why you are so affected. It’s not like they died for good. They will reincarnate on Earth, in the Human Realm.”

“. . . You’re insane,” said Naruto after a while, barely finding his words. 

He was floored by the revelation. He had never imagined that this new world he lived in right now had that sort of dynamic. Right now, he did not fully understand it; his brain had yet to grasp the full meaning of Chika’s words. 

“I went out of my way to rescue you. I spared your life after all you’ve done to those Shinigami, and I also cashed in a favour with Unohana-san to heal your injuries. . . Yet you call me insane. That’s how I’m rewarded,” the black cat said, shaking its head.

That was news for Naruto. He did not know how he had gotten to this place until now. The last thing he remembered from Rukongai was passing out from blood loss after killing the psychotic, pink-haired woman. 

“You should’ve just killed me. You should’ve just let me die with the rest of my people. I’d rather die than live my life in a hole.”

“You don’t have to stay in this hole. Your future depends entirely on your choice,” Chika said as it looked at its paw, flexing its claws. 

“Why go through all this trouble? Why didn’t you kill me? What do you want from me?” asked Naruto, tired of talking with the cat. 

“Whether it’s 1, 10, or 30 thousand souls who die, who cares? If you had 10,000 pebbles and you lost them, would you cry over them? All those Rukongai people that got culled are like gravel. But you are different,” said Chika, its yellow eyes peering into Naruto’s. “You killed a captain when you aren’t even a Shinigami yourself. You've even come up with a kido technique despite never getting any training. That bitch, Saito, may have been a perverted psycho, but her strength was the real deal. You aren’t gravel. You are a diamond in the rough. You have value.”

“You asked me why I saved you? Become a shinigami. That’s what I want from you.”

Naruto could not hide his disbelief. 

“You’re out of your mind. Are you really asking me to become a shinigami? After you just admitted to massacring thousands of innocents? Get the fuck out of here!”

The black cat let out a sigh as it jumped off his chest and left. Once it stepped beyond the bars of his cell, Chika stopped and spoke one more time:

“You seem to care a great deal about the gravel of Rukongai. Know this: as we speak, another 8000 souls from Rukongai are scheduled to be killed. This isn’t the first, nor will it be the last time something like this happens. You can’t do anything to stop what’s about to happen now, but if you become a shinigami, you might just gain the authority to dictate who gets to live and who gets to die in the future.”

“You’re taking me for a fool again,” said Naruto with a scoff. “As if a mere killer like you would get a say in anything. You probably just take orders from someone above you, who also takes orders from a Daimyo or some other sort of leader.”

The cat was not offended by his mockery and replied calmly:

“Whether it’s the Human Realm, Hueco Mundo, or Soul Society, one thing has never changed since time immemorial: strength reigns supreme. Nobility? Laws? Rules? They mean nothing in front of absolute power. If you truly care about the Rukon district, becoming a shinigami is the only way for you to make a change.” 

As the cat started walking away, it threw one last sentence over its shoulder:

“I’ll give you some time to think about it. I’ll come back in one week.”

⁂

Most people in Soul Society did not need to eat; that was the case for the souls with average spiritual energy. However, Shinigami and those who had the potential to become one needed food in order to survive. 

Four days passed since he was imprisoned, but he had yet to receive any food or water. 

‘Is this a form of torture?’

Naruto had not forgotten the memories of his past life. Although he had never been in the position of being tortured himself, he had heard stories of other people who had been captured by the enemy. Starving a prisoner or making them suffer from thirst was not an uncommon practice when other, quicker forms of torture failed. 

The cell he was in did not have any natural lighting, and nobody came to visit him, so he had no way of measuring the passing of time other than by estimating it based on his degree of thirst and hunger. His lips were chapped, his skin dry, and a feeling of dizziness was making it hard for him to keep his eyes open for a long time. 

Nevertheless, he did not stay still. Despite the chains around his neck and ankles draining his spiritual energy every time he tried to use it, Naruto never stopped trying to circulate it towards his hands and create a Rasengan. After four days, he started making some progress. 

A great tremor shook the cell, and grains of sand and dirt fell from the ceiling. 

‘It started again.’

Every once in a while, the cell would be shaken by tremors. In spite of the fact that he was imprisoned very deep underground, his senses could vaguely pick up a large number of powerful spiritual pressure signatures in the distance. 

‘Is there a war outside? Could it be that they aren’t torturing me but that they forgot I’m here?’

Regardless of what was the case, he had no plans of waiting to die of hunger or thirst. He was going to make it out alive of this predicament. 

His efforts over the past few days were not in vain. Considering that his very life was on the line and that he had never stopped manipulating his spiritual energy, his control over it increased far beyond his previous level. Furthermore, it was a well-documented fact among shinigami that going through life-and-death situations would stimulate one’s potential and increase their spiritual energy. 

For some people, the changes they experienced would be minute, barely distinguishable, but for others, they would be like the difference between heaven and earth. This time, Naruto was part of the latter category; the black cat’s assessment of him had not been wrong. 

At that moment, in spite of the chains that were draining his spiritual energy every time he tried to manipulate it, a sphere of blue energy appeared in his two palms. 

He could only maintain them for less than a second, but the mere act of conjuring them had torn apart the straitjacket that had been immobilising him, freeing his arms. 

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Hours passed, and, other than the straitjacket, he had also managed to break the chain around his neck and one of the chains around his ankles. There was only one left, around his left ankle. Unfortunately, his reserves of spiritual energy had been exhausted by now. 

He grunted in exertion as he pulled on the last chain with both hands, trying to break it apart with brute force. Alas, those were not mere chains; moreover, after not eating and drinking anything for four days, his physical strength was far from its peak. No matter how hard he strained himself, the chain held strong. 

Understanding the futility of it all, he stopped wasting his already dwindling stamina and lied on the stone bed, resting, and waiting for his spiritual energy to recover. 

Two more hours passed before he amassed enough spiritual energy to bypass the drain of the chain and create another Rasengan. Just like before, his orb of spiritual energy lasted for not even a second, but its destructive power was enough to instantly obliterate the chain at the contact with it. 

At last, he was free! Adrenaline coursed through his system. It was as though his weakened physical state after suffering from hunger and thirst for so long had all but vanished. 

With the chains no longer draining his spiritual energy, Naruto easily conjured another Rasengan, destroying the bars of his cell. 

He broke into a mad dash across the long, dark tunnel, his breath coming out in gasps.

He didn’t know for how long he had been running, but by the time the end of the corridor came in sight, he was just barely dragging his feet. The rush of adrenaline had passed, and now he was back to his previous exhaustion. 

Pushing the large gates open, Naruto didn’t know what to expect. . . but he had certainly not expected the sight in front of his eyes. 

It was night, but his surroundings were well-lit due to a large number of fires burning everywhere. As far as his eyes could see, corpses of white-robed people were strewn all over the place, on the street, on the demolished buildings littering the city, or piled up in small mountains. The image of his village getting slaughtered by the Shinigami was nothing compared to this macabre scenery. 



While he was in a daze, a white-robed man came out of nowhere and attacked Naruto, stabbing his rapier towards his chest. 

However, another man appeared between the white-robed man and Naruto as though he had teleported and threw a flying kick at the attacker.

His kick was so violent and powerful that the man's head exploded like a watermelon, and blood gushed out of his headless corpse like a geyser. 



Naruto had been a ninja in his past life, so it wasn’t as if he was the squeamish type who had never seen violence… … but he had truly never witnessed such gore before. He had never seen a massacre on such a large scale, so many corpses, and so much blood that it was pooling up to his ankles. 

“Yo, you took your sweet time before you finally came out,” the man said as he turned to face him. 

Instead of an answer, Naruto bent over and threw up. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in more than four days, so nothing but bile and stomach acid came out of his stomach as he retched. 

“To think you’d have the leisure to throw up and leave yourself open on the battlefield. You’re quite the easygoing person, aren’t you?” the man laughed at him.

In truth, as strange as it felt to him as well, Naruto could not sense any negative emotions from the man in front of him.

“Who are you? Where is this place?” the blond asked, his breathing laborious. 

“You’ve forgotten me already? You’re hurting my feelings.”

“...”

“I’m Chika. Shihoin Chika. Yes, I’m the black cat who visited you a few days ago.”

Naruto took a second look at him. 

He was a tall, handsome man, seemingly in his late 20s. His short, silvery hair made a striking contrast with his dark skin, and his yellow eyes and confident smirk gave him a carefree, mischievous appearance. If not for the large amounts of blood and gore staining his white haori, he would look like the type of person anyone would like to be friends with.



Exhausted and drained of all power as he was, Naruto couldn’t put up any resistance when the Shinigami grabbed him by the back of his top and Flash Stepped away together with him. 

When the high-speed movement technique ended, they landed on a particularly large pile of corpses. 

“See all these corpses underneath our feet? These are Quincy,” Chika Shihoin said indifferently. “These people are the reason why we were ordered to go to the Rukon district and kill thousands.”

Then, he pointed towards another pile of corpses not far from them.

“And that, right there, is the leader of the Quincy.”

A middle-aged man with long dark hair, a large moustache, and wearing a dark red cloak stood with a sabre in his hand, facing off against another middle-aged man who appeared to be a shinigami if the black robes and the white haori he was wearing were anything to go by. 

Chika turned to glance at Naruto, and it seemed like he was only then realising how malnourished and weakened the blond appeared to be. 

“Sorry for not sending anyone to look after you. As you can see, we were more than a little preoccupied.”

“Were you going to leave me there till I died?” Naruto asked, his voice hoarse from not having drunk a drop of water in days. 

“I was going to check up on you tonight. I knew things were going to end soon,” said the Shinigami. 

Naruto’s Negative Emotions Sensing let him know that that was a lie. It appeared that the Shinigami had almost forgotten about him.

“Everything will end tonight,” Chika said. “See the man with the flaming zanpakuto? That is Genryusai Yamamoto. He is our Captain Commander, the leader of Gotei 13.”

While Chika was speaking, Naruto’s eyes strayed to the people surrounding the two middle-aged men who were about to fight. 

‘That woman who broke my arm before is there too,’ he thought. ‘What did Chika say her name was? Unohana?’

The woman in question looked nothing like the elegant and ladylike person from a few days ago. Her long black hair was untied and billowing in the wind, her clothes were soaked, crimson red with the blood of the enemy, and her eyes were shining with ferocity. 

In truth, as he glanced at the rest of the Shinigami who were wearing white haori on top of their black robes, he realised that most of them looked like violence incarnate. Bloodthirst was rolling off them in waves.

Shihoin crossed his arms over his chest as he spectated the imminent clash.

“Watch closely, boy. Sear this moment into your mind so that you will never forget, for as long as you live, what it means to go against the Gotei 13.”

If Naruto had expected to see a traditional fight between two swordsmen, he was sorely mistaken because, when the distance between the two middle-aged men shrank to no more than 10 metres, a third man unexpectedly sprang up from the pile of corpses underneath their feet and stabbed his sword into the cloaked man’s back, impaling him. 



Simultaneously, Yamamoto’s fire sword exploded, and he charged at the enemy with a scream.

The Quincy leader had yet to recover from the shock of being stabbed in the back when Yamamoto lunged at him, slashing downwards with enough momentum to split a mountain. 

An immense tornado of fire erupted from the Captain Commander’s sword, engulfing the Quincy leader. The flames roared as if they were alive, piercing the skies and sending outwards a wave of heat so powerful that it set all the piles of Quincy and Shinigami corpses in the surroundings alight. 



Shihoin had to step in front of Naruto and flare his spiritual energy to protect him from the blast so that he wouldn’t die from that mere heatwave.

Inwardly, Chika Shihoin thought that the young man had become mute with shock after witnessing such a display of strength, being awed and frightened into silence by Yamamoto’s power. Little did he know that, in his past life, Naruto had been capable of even greater feats of destruction. . .

But the blond remained silent. 

‘I’ll play his game for now. It didn’t look like he was lying about the balance of this world or about the Shinigami’s role.’

It was not like his anger at those who had massacred his friends and village had vanished into thin air; Naruto was not cold-blooded and rational enough for that.

However, he was not an imbecile either. After nearly dying of hunger and thirst in his prison cell and after becoming aware of the Soul Reapers’ strength and how weak he was compared to them, he understood that throwing a tantrum and lashing out would be no different from suicide. For now, he had no choice but to comply. For now, he would bide his time.



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AN: this is a nice video to watch. It's about the original Gotei 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlEptwvjgTw . Most of the gifs in this chapter are taken from it.