Chapter 065: An Unfinished Ability
Matsushita Yusuke's blade came down like something dividing the world in half, driving straight toward Miasa Susumu's face.
One instant.
Maybe just the impression of an instant.
Miasa felt death with complete clarity.
His captain was right there. A vice-captain was right there. And he still felt that he was separated from it by exactly one thin line.
Then the blade angled away. It veered sideways in the final fraction of the arc and drove into the empty ground to his left.
The breath Miasa hadn't realized he was holding came out.
The force discharged into the earth all at once.
The ground cracked.
A deep sound rolled through the area. Visible turbulence poured into the surface and the ground split outward from the impact point in all directions. A web of fractures spread from center to edge, the lines reaching and branching, still extending outward as the whole section of ground began to shake.
People reacted in various ways.
"Is that... an earthquake?"
Aizen Sosuke adjusted his glasses in silence. Kijishi made a short sound, the particular sound of someone who had just lost interest in something.
"Boring."
He lifted one foot and brought it down.
The shaking stopped.
As if something large and subterranean had been moving and had just received a direct answer, the ground settled. The trembling ran itself out and went still.
The onlookers looked at each other, then back at the impact site. Their expressions had changed noticeably.
The thing that had just happened.
An Academy student had done that?
Nobody said it out loud. But the understanding moved through the group with the quiet inevitability of something everyone had arrived at simultaneously.
"You all right?"
Matsushita Yusuke's voice reached Miasa, who had drifted slightly.
He looked up. Met Matsushita Yusuke's eyes directly. There was something genuine in them that Miasa hadn't expected, and he took a half step back before he'd decided to.
Startled.
Because the Zanpakuto in his hand had been shattered by that same blade. The distance between them in terms of ability was clear and it wasn't small.
"I've lost."
He lowered his head, a single brief nod, then turned and walked away.
Matsushita Yusuke had started to say something, looked at Miasa's back, and let it go.
From the far side of the grounds, Aizen was already walking over quickly.
"How are you feeling, Matsushita-kun?"
A natural enough question. What had just happened in front of him could only be described as a near thing, and the concern was reasonable.
Matsushita Yusuke smiled with some effort, pressed his right hand against his own wrist, and said with a complicated expression:
"Honestly. Not great."
That was accurate.
His entire right hand was shaking and couldn't stop.
An aftereffect of extreme output. Not unusual in itself.
Aizen gave a small nod. The two of them said a brief goodbye to Kijishi and left Squad 11's grounds.
Once they were outside the gates, the expression Matsushita Yusuke had been maintaining came apart.
All at once.
It hurt.
He hadn't fully mastered Shikai yet. Using the partial release was something like borrowing against credit he hadn't earned, and the physical cost of it had been larger than expected. The numb and buzzing sensation was running from his right hand upward, spreading, until roughly half of his body felt like it was operating at reduced capacity.
Which meant walking, it turned out, was difficult.
He made his way forward with a visible limp, and Aizen found the sight apparently entertaining enough to let a small laugh through.
"Is it serious?"
"It's, uh. A little more than I anticipated."
If Seireitei had taxis, this would be the moment.
Aizen laughed again, stepped back, positioned himself alongside Matsushita Yusuke, and reached out.
He took Matsushita Yusuke's right hand and placed it over his own shoulder.
Oh.
The number one terrifying individual in three worlds is being my walking support right now?
This doesn't feel right. This is too much. There has to be something wrong with this picture.
Matsushita Yusuke tried to refuse several times. Aizen showed no intention of letting go. Eventually, with no remaining options, Matsushita Yusuke accepted.
"Thank you, Aizen-sensei."
"You can skip the thanks. Answer some questions instead."
"You've been waiting with those, haven't you."
"Why didn't you kill him at the end?"
A brief pause, then Aizen added with a smile:
"That Miasa was going for your life with every technique he used. The horizontal draw against the overhead, for example. If that had connected properly, you'd have been walking out of there minus a significant quantity of blood."
The spine would have stopped it from being a clean split. But with the number of organs that would have been cut through, the practical result would have been similar.
"He was definitely trying. But if you can't land it, none of that matters. I don't particularly care about that level of hostility."
Live blades meant blood. That was expected.
Aizen looked at him with an expression that wasn't quite a smile.
"And the last strike. What were you thinking?"
His level of perception was high enough to see what others couldn't.
"You pulled back slightly at the last moment. That's why you had time to redirect. And that pulling back is probably why you're in the condition you're in now. Being damaged by your own attack isn't a decision a careful person makes."
Matsushita Yusuke smiled awkwardly and gave the honest answer.
"Killing someone doesn't benefit me. And. I'm not fond of the smell of blood."
Not taking a life was, in one sense, a gesture toward the person you'd beaten. As for the physical consequences afterward, those had genuinely been a surprise.
"Goodwill with no expectation of return. That does sound like something you'd say."
"Do you think it's the wrong way to think about it, Aizen-sensei?"
No immediate answer. Aizen was quiet for a moment.
"Who knows. I just think I saw more unexpected things from you today than I usually do."
A pause, and then the same steady, unmoved voice said:
"What you used just now. That wasn't a full Shikai, was it, Matsushita-kun?"
When it came to reading what was in front of him, Aizen was genuinely in a category by himself.
Matsushita Yusuke gave up and nodded.
"As you said. I haven't fully mastered Shikai yet. What you saw was just a form change. If I had to give it a technical name, probably something like... half-Shikai?"
"And yet the output was already remarkable. Physical-type, from the look of it?"
You saw all of that yourself and you're still asking me?
He kept the commentary internal.
"Are you asking about the specific ability, Aizen-sensei?"
"Skip it if you'd rather not say."
"It's not something I want to hide. It's just hard to describe in words right now. Let me think..."
He frowned for a moment, working through it.
"More of a state than an ability, I think."
A particular mode that activated when the Zanpakuto was released.
Also an unfinished one.
"When I'm using this Zanpakuto, I can adjust the amount of force I put out precisely."
A brief pause.
"At any time. In any situation."