Crows x Souls

Following his recent brush with the Shinigamis, Itachi quickly left the area and picked another direction to travel in, and this time he didn't move in leisure like he usually did.

Though he was unaware of it, the sheer size of the Soul Society made it a near impossibility to track just one person, more so someone like him who kept his presence to the barest minimum. 

Having finally received a hint of progress from his sword, Itachi spent his free time on channeling his energy through the sword and looking for any other reaction it might have. 

While the sword didn't show any other physical reaction since that day, the feeling Itachi was now getting from it was something that spurred him on greatly. 

It felt as if he was on the cusp of discovering something and his attention were mostly on the sword, day in and day out, even through the night since he didn't require sleep. 

Feeling like he had gotten a sufficient distance away from his previous location, Itachi slowed down after finding another place to crash behind a waterfall, and focused all of his time on his sword. 

It was a new thing for him, never having done something like this when he was alive, but then again he had never been dead and never been to the afterlife, at least this version of it. 

.... 

Around the place where Itachi and Hiyori's group had fought against the Hollows, a man stood and calmly surveyed the area with a hint of amusement in his eyes. 

Blonde shaggy long hair framing a tired-looking lazy face, he wore the standard black shihakushō but with a white haori over it with the word '12' written in kanji at the back of it. 

"Hiyori-chan was right. Low level Adjuchas, but Adjuchas nonetheless. They were lucky." He said, squinting his eyes in distaste at the implications of what this meant. 

Adjuchas-level Hollows were entities that could even give the most skilled Vice Captains a death scare and while the ones they fought weren't at that level, the fact that droves of these types of Hollows were getting into the Soul Society through undetectable means was a worrying thing. 

"Hai, Hiyori-chan, can you not give me more problems to think about?" He whined at his absent overly aggressive Vice Captain and how she just dumped everything at his feet. 

It would have been best if they managed to get something more important from the stray Shinigami they encountered apart from 'a middle-aged bastard like you' that she reported. 

"Just why did you choose to retire at such a time, Captain Hikifune?" He sighed in resentment. 

If only the former Captain of the 12th Division, Kirio Hikifune, didn't choose to retire then he wouldn't be so swamped with work. 

He took out a device from his sleeves and looked at it before sighing again as he silently left the area. 

Kisuke Urahara, Captain of the 12th Division. 

….. 

Itachi sighed once again for the umpteenth time as he failed to grasp what was within his grasp. 

Even now he could clearly feel it, a thrumming sensation from the sword, but it felt like he was missing something. 

It wasn't with the sword, he knew that for sure. If anything, the sword was the more expectant party in the relationship between man and sword. He was the problem, Itachi realized. 

It felt like the reason was because of something he was doing rather than something he wasn't. 

Now the question remained; what was it that was so simple that Itachi was missing? 

If it had been another soul with half of Itachi's talents and experience, they would have succeeded in what he was currently failing at. 

"I guess I'm the one not making it easy for you. How ironic." He said. 

He sheathed the sword to the strap on his waist and left it at that. He decided not to force it, knowing whatever the problem was would unravel itself very soon. 

He had not come across anyone since that fateful day and that was a good thing for Itachi. The less people he met the better, lesser trail to follow that way. 

While he was content with his life so far in the afterlife, the recent upsurge in Hollow activity worried him a bit. 

He had seen a few empty settlements that had been attacked by Hollows and it was impossible that everyone escaped to safety before the Shinigamis arrived. 

Basically he was conflicted, not because of the lacking sense of compassion he had, but because of the reason for his actions and lack thereof. 

For most of his life, Itachi has been one to follow orders - a sense of duty instilled in him since his earlier days as a child in the Hokage's ANBU. 

Even when he became a rogue-nin, he still acted under orders of the very village that ordered him to eradicate his clan.

Like a chained puppet, Itachi has always been tied to his sense of duty and orders that even his death was carried out by a sense of duty to his dead clan and his brother. 

And now, he was dead. Yet, still alive. 

No orders. No duty. No obligation. 

Only figuring out in his death that a life without any of these was vapid. 

He had no longing for being someone's expendable tool. With no sense of servitude, the duty of picking up a weapon was lost to him and felt hollow. With such hollow thoughts on duty, his obligations to the helpless souls of the Soul Society, and inadvertently the Shinigamis, were nonexistent. 

'So what then is the reason for life in death?' Itachi thought. 

As someone brought up in war and strife, facing trials of blood since his tender age as a child and to his life living breath, Itachi had been a ninja. 

All his life, however short it had been, was all about killing that he felt like an old man at the end of it. 

He could still be considered a child when he died but his strength and experiences made him indistinguishable from the old veterans of his time. 

"I guess… self-discovery."

'….Itachi.'