Chapter 086: Matsushita Yusuke's Ability
Losing the direct clash meant one thing clearly: Matsushita Yusuke could not beat Kijishi in a straight fight.
Frustrating, but not exactly surprising.
Kijishi had a captain's foundation behind him. The gap in raw training time, in combat experience, in the instincts that came from years of operating at that level: all of it went against Yusuke. When he thought about it that way, holding his own for as long as he had was already more than most people could have managed.
But surrendering was not an option. Setting aside Kijishi's stated intention to kill him, those quest rewards were right there on the table, and Matsushita Yusuke had not come this far to walk away from them.
He watched Kijishi grind forward step by step and made his decision.
No more head-on. Time to change the approach.
He pulled his blade back and stepped away.
The sudden withdrawal was clearly read as retreat. Which was the point.
Kijishi was not about to let that happen.
"You think I'm letting you run?!"
He came roaring after, Bawei in a two-handed horizontal sweep from left to right. The serrated cleaver trailing lightning through the air. If that landed cleanly, the result was not going to be pretty.
Matsushita Yusuke's expression tightened. Kongozō came across to meet it.
One strike announced itself to the whole street. Lightning crackling, the air around the blade warping, a swing that carried the weight of everything Kijishi had behind it.
The other made no announcement at all. No visible reiatsu bleed, no sound before contact. Just the blade, moving.
Every person watching could picture the outcome. Kongozō shattering. Yusuke cut clean through. End of fight.
Soifon felt her scalp prickle. Her thoughts stopped working in any organized way.
"Hey! Stop!"
Nobody was listening.
Kijishi's expression was already forming its victory shape. He could see what was coming. His laugh was coming out ugly and satisfied.
Deserves it. This is exactly what you get.
The reiatsu on the losing side. The contest not even close. And now a desperate block thrown up in a hurry: from any angle, that was a fatal opening. The price for it was going to be paid right now.
Except Kongozō did not shatter.
The two blades connected with a clean ringing impact, same as the first exchange.
Crack.
Brilliant sparks flew. Matsushita Yusuke staggered back, barely keeping his feet.
But that was all.
"...?"
Kijishi's face shifted. Something he couldn't quite process was happening in front of him. Every variable in the situation pointed toward Yusuke going down, and yet the result was this: battered, unsteady, but still standing.
Why?
He genuinely could not work it out. It felt like they had simply clashed and bounced off each other. Something was off.
Thinking through problems had never been Kijishi's preferred approach. Uncertainty was not a reason to slow down. When in doubt, press harder until something gave.
He bared his teeth, steadied his stance, pulled in a deep breath, and raised Bawei over his head with both hands.
"Come on!"
The shout was as much for himself as anything else. Conviction amplified into sound.
And the clouds overhead answered.
The dark mass that had been sitting above the street since Kijishi's release began to roll and crack. The light inside it shifted and gathered, and then a thick bolt of lightning drove straight down and connected with Bawei.
Not actual control over lightning. A use of reiatsu: forcing the natural discharge forming overhead to ground itself through him, channeling its energy into the blade. The sound it made was enormous. The light was blinding. Kijishi had stacked everything he had onto this single strike and he knew it.
The cleaver swung down.
The air warped along its path. Thunder layered on thunder. Kijishi's voice came with it.
"Die!"
Matsushita Yusuke looked up at him with a calm expression.
Then swung Kongozō.
Same as before. No announcements, no visible buildup. Just the blade.
The two weapons met.
Crack.
Matsushita Yusuke was launched.
He hit the ground hard, rolled with it, and eventually pulled himself upright on unsteady legs. His face made clear to everyone watching that this had not been comfortable. But he was standing.
Kijishi stared.
Why is he not dead?
A strike like that, another captain would have had trouble walking away from cleanly. An Academy student should have been finished on the spot.
And then he noticed something else.
The lightning wreathing Bawei was behaving strangely. The crackling currents that had been running steadily across the blade were breaking up, flickering, dropping away in scattered pieces.
His connection to his Zanpakuto was intact. He could confirm that directly. The problem was not on his end.
So why was the state suddenly unstable?
What did he do to me?
The unknown was more unsettling than the blow had been. Kijishi hesitated for the first time. He did not pursue. He called across the distance instead.
"What are you?!"
Matsushita Yusuke did not answer.
He was looking at his own hands.
Not untouched. The web of skin between his thumbs and forefingers on both sides had torn open, and the underlying tissue and muscle fiber were visible in clean lines. His hands were trembling slightly as he let out a long breath.
He had made the attempt. The result was not what he had hoped for.
Kongozō's ability was not complicated.
What those clashes had been doing was exactly what it looked like: through contact, through each collision, analyze and break apart what the opponent was doing. Read it, work through it, find where it was thinnest.
Then break through.
The same thing that had happened against Miasa. Contact, adjustment, and then Kongozō found the gap and went through it. Every system had a weak point. Even a captain-level one.
But it was never going to be that clean.
The reiatsu gap was too large to simply step across. And even with the weak point located, pushing through to it was another problem entirely.
What he had managed was the outer layer.
The lightning sheathing Bawei, that outer shell, Kongozō had cracked it. But the wall it formed was still enough to stop him there. The ability had found the surface and broken pieces of it, but could not reach through to what was underneath.
Only the shell. Not the core.
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