Chapter 073: Give Me Power
The sound had no sharpness to it whatsoever.
It was the kind of sound that belonged to a summer night after rain, the insects and birds that filled the warm air in the moment the heat finally broke. Less a sound than something closer to white noise, the kind that pulled you toward sleep without announcing it.
Not long after.
The sentries, who had been moving into alert positions a moment ago, swayed and went down.
The dull impact of bodies hitting the ground, one after another, told Tosen what the scene had become as clearly as his eyes would have.
He stepped forward calmly.
The blade that had just been released returned to its sealed form and slid back into the sheath.
"Let's go."
Tosen kept a low profile on most days. But when he decided to make a point, there was something in it that reminded you of exactly whose side he was on.
Matsushita Yusuke nodded and followed.
He passed the scattered figures on the ground and took a quick look at each of them.
All unconscious. Breathing steady. Heart rates intact.
A perfect sleep, nothing damaged, nothing disrupted. A cleaner result than almost any other method available.
Tosen could do this?
Matsushita Yusuke watched his back with a thoughtful expression.
He hadn't paid much attention to Tosen's Zanpakuto before now. But the man had Bankai. Of course his abilities ran deeper than a few drinking sessions at Aizen's regular spot had suggested.
Suzumushi fell under the Kido category, by type.
The specific ability, while not something Matsushita Yusuke had ever focused on closely, had a clear nature to it. Vibrating the blade to generate a sound-based attack. The broad application was disrupting an opponent's hearing, removing that sensory advantage from the fight. But the advanced uses went considerably further. The sound waves could prevent other weapons from binding against the blade. Adjusting the frequency could produce targeted effects on specific opponents, up to and including something close to hypnosis.
So Tosen was also his own kind of inventor.
Matsushita Yusuke had probably been slightly underestimating him. More than slightly.
Something else had also registered.
The reiatsu fluctuation just now had been completely stable. Release, activate, seal. No variation anywhere in the sequence. And every person on the receiving end had gone down without offering any resistance at all.
That kind of result only happened when the gap between the two sides was completely unambiguous.
These sentries were probably all ordinary squad members.
Matsushita Yusuke could possibly achieve something similar. But it would be messier, and it wouldn't look anything like that effortless.
The look he was giving Tosen's back had acquired a certain quality.
This person was harder to read than expected. Had he already reached Bankai?
The original story hadn't covered how Tosen developed his abilities. He had simply been there, quietly, following Aizen, and by the time the story began he was already a captain.
Compared to Gin Ichimaru, who had been explicitly named as a genius, Tosen's characterization had always been quieter. More understated.
"Something on your mind, Matsushita-kun?"
"Nothing. I just got thinking about something. Lead the way, Tosen."
No particular honorific. The two of them had met at enough drinking sessions that Matsushita Yusuke had settled into something more casual without thinking about it.
They left through the west gate and walked until the buildings thinned out and eventually disappeared, arriving in the open wasteland of District 39. The terrain here was flat and bare, almost no housing visible anywhere, and the vegetation was sparse enough to be nearly absent. Scarcity as a physical landscape.
In the middle of all that open emptiness, Matsushita Yusuke spotted a solitary figure.
Shinigami uniform. Zanpakuto at the hip. Hands folded in front of him, looking up at the moon, as if working through something.
When the two of them got close, the figure seemed to surface from wherever his thoughts had been, and turned his head down.
"You're here."
Aizen Sosuke offered his familiar, unhurried smile.
His brown hair caught the moonlight in a way that had a texture like silk. He turned to face them, gaze shifting from Tosen and settling on Matsushita Yusuke.
What was in that gaze was a complicated thing. Appraisal. Consideration. A thread of hesitation alongside something else that might have been anticipation. It was a lot of things held together, and it only lasted a moment.
Then, as if a decision had been reached, he spoke in the same tone he always used.
"Matsushita-kun. Are you afraid right now?"
What a question.
He couldn't answer immediately. Aizen seemed to read something in that pause, and followed up.
"Has this encounter with Kijishi Kenpachi made you feel the limits of your own strength? Made you want more of it?"
Without power, some things couldn't be changed. And you couldn't protect your own life.
"No matter how much something matters to you: without the strength to match it, having it taken from you, having it destroyed, is simply what happens."
If he had to put an image to it.
"When the wheel rolls by, the nobles under their canopies don't spare a thought for whatever's underneath it."
Aizen raised one hand and pointed at himself.
"I have something I want to change."
He pointed toward Tosen, standing quietly nearby.
"He has someone he wants to answer for."
And then he pointed toward Matsushita Yusuke.
"What do you want?"
So this was the entry exam.
Matsushita Yusuke thought about it for only a moment before he had his answer.
"I want power."
Yes. That was exactly it.
"Honestly, I don't fully understand the big ideas behind any of this. I don't have any particular ambition to overturn or change the world right now. I just think..."
He worked through the phrasing. Some of it was the right thing to say in this moment. Some of it he meant completely.
"There are things I consider worth protecting. I should be capable of protecting them."
Because if he died, everything he'd worked for went with him. The meters, the relationships, everything. And then Aizen would eventually end up sealed away wrapped in bandages, and Soifon would go back to being exactly what she was before any of this happened.
That was unacceptable to think about.
So.
Give me power.
The corners of Aizen Sosuke's mouth lifted slightly. Before he could say anything, the familiar notification appeared in front of Matsushita Yusuke.