Chapter 085: Gnashing
Provocation.
As combat strategies go, it was about as straightforward as they came.
The usual reason for using it was confidence. You were certain enough in your own ability that you needed your opponent to stay and fight rather than cut their losses and run. No subtlety, no misdirection, just a direct line between the challenge and the outcome.
Under normal circumstances, it wasn't something people fell for.
Under normal circumstances.
Kijishi Kenpachi was not a normal circumstance.
The words hit him and his eyes went wide.
"...What?!"
Veins surfaced across the whites of his eyes. The emotion that rolled through him was total, the kind that pulled every muscle in his body tight at once, tendons drawing taut from his shoulders down to his hands.
Every concession he thought he had made, every moment he had talked himself into offering terms, and the brat had come back with that. Even the most patient man alive had his limit. For someone with Kijishi's temper, there was no limit to speak of in the first place.
I am going to kill you.
That thought arrived and settled, and after it, nothing else.
He roared and came forward at full stride.
Bawei erupted. Fierce purple lightning detonated across the blade, and the heat of it spread into the surrounding air, a scorching quality that pressed against everyone nearby and demanded to be noticed. Kijishi shifted to a two-handed grip mid-step, dragging the massive cleaver into position as his reiatsu surged further.
Bang.
Another release. The captain-level reiatsu he had been carrying was forced up another step, and Bawei's amplification stacked on top of that, taking the total output to something that couldn't be looked at sideways without flinching.
Deep crimson-violet light threaded outward through the air in long crackling filaments. The onlookers fifty meters back were already scrambling, and then the sounds started.
"Ah! That hurts!"
The lightning wasn't atmospheric. It was reiatsu-charged, a byproduct of Bawei's release that had been built to cause harm, and it was reaching through the air and finding anyone it could. Several people went down with foam at their lips.
The Squad 11 members who had come out as crowd management started moving. Not to help anyone who had fallen. To protect their captain's reputation from taking any further damage.
"Everyone back! Get clear, unless you want to end up like that!"
"A Gotei 13 captain is in a fight! If you stay, whatever happens to you is your own fault!"
"Last warning! Move or deal with the consequences!"
The crowd scattered. Soifon watched with her jaw tight. Aizen, at a greater distance, pressed his lips together as if weighing something, then let it go with a small shake of his head.
"What a crude way to operate."
The same general category of behavior, applied to ordinary people. But the difference in quality between Kijishi and anyone else who might use that kind of pressure was exactly what it looked like. Shallow. Unrefined.
Aizen found, not for the first time, that he had slightly overestimated this man. Among the captains, Kijishi was the bottom of a category that didn't have much competition for that spot.
But there was a positive framing available.
As a proving ground for Matsushita Yusuke, the material was perfectly adequate.
The question was how far Matsushita Yusuke would take it.
Tosen's voice came from beside him before the thought finished forming. The tension in it was audible.
"They're making contact..."
Crack.
Two blades came together in the air like a pair of animals going for each other's throats. The edges met and ground against each other, and the sparks that burst from the contact point were bright enough to throw light across both of their faces.
That contact was not the end of anything.
It was a beginning.
Because the momentum of the collision had not resolved. Neither side had given ground, and with no winner from the first exchange, what came next was something more fundamental.
A straight contest of reiatsu.
Both of them tensed at the same moment without coordinating it.
Core engaged, full body drawn together, power channeled up through the hands and from the hands into the blade. Two opposing flows of reiatsu, nothing like each other in character, detonated outward from the contact point between the blades.
Both of them felt like they were running hot. The presence each was putting out was not something the space around them could quietly absorb.
Reiatsu against reiatsu. Strength against strength.
With the two of them as the center, the wave it generated rolled outward in every direction. The crowd that had already been struggling at the edges was knocked sideways. Even the Squad 11 members who had been standing closest to their captain were staggered, heads spinning.
"Captain, you can't just... the buildings are going to come down!"
This was still the third western district. Still within the managed perimeter. Damage on this scale was exactly the kind of thing that came with a formal inquiry attached to it.
The warning, offered out of genuine concern, received exactly one response.
Boom.
A bolt of black-purple lightning cracked off Bawei and drove into the ground beside the subordinate who had spoken. The reiatsu inside it detonated on impact, blowing out an irregular crater half a meter across. The squad member was launched sideways and landed hard.
Kijishi Kenpachi did not need to be told anything by anyone.
Right now, the only thing on his list was putting the infuriating kid in front of him into the ground. Every other consideration was noise.
I will kill you.
Not a figure of speech. A statement.
Both of their expressions had gone serious. Between the two blades, the light shifted and changed in pulses, mapping the contest's progress across both of their faces as it moved.
The balance held. Held. Then.
Kijishi laughed.
It came out ugly, a sound that belonged on a street corner, but there was something in it now. His body was still shaking slightly from the effort of sustaining this output. His voice had acquired an edge of satisfaction underneath the contempt.
"Not bad, kid."
A sound from the contact point. Small, dry.
The balance that had been holding tipped.
"Your Zanpakuto leans toward straight power output, doesn't it? That's why you were so sure of yourself."
Taking something that had been sitting near vice-captain level and forcing it up until it could match a captain head-on. That was no small thing to pull off.
But it was also exactly as far as it went.
"The gap in raw quality isn't something you close with technique. I'm a captain. Don't underestimate me, kid!"
Boom.
The reiatsu that crashed out of him hit like a wave breaking against a wall, and this time it didn't equalize.
The words came easier now. The contest's direction was no longer in question.
Matsushita Yusuke's jaw tightened. He was pushed back half a step.
He was losing the raw strength exchange.
"This isn't good."
Tosen turned his head, brow locked together.
At this intensity, even a small break in the balance ran straight to the outcome. There was no ambiguity in what he was reading.
This was Matsushita Yusuke losing.
Though calling it recklessness seemed wrong.
Stepping up to a captain and holding a direct clash for this long: that was not nothing. That was what potential looked like from the outside. He simply needed more time. More development.
"Aizen-sama, I..."
"Patience, Tosen."
Aizen's tone was even.
"Do you think Matsushita-kun is about to lose?"
Tosen wanted to say yes. The evidence was right in front of him. But his leader didn't make empty statements. He stayed quiet.
"In my view, this contest isn't over."
The reason was straightforward.
"Matsushita-kun hasn't used his ability yet."
And one more thing.
"He hasn't called for help. Which means Matsushita-kun himself hasn't given up."
He still had the will to turn this around.