Chapter 089: Ittō Kasō
What was happening overhead?
Nobody could say with any certainty.
Because every person present had their attention pulled upward by the force of it, and the feeling that came back was something close to being completely at a loss.
"What is that?"
"I don't know... look! The trees, the houses, the clothes--"
Points of light were flickering.
Everything in the surrounding area, the trees, the buildings, even the fabric on people's bodies, was beginning to come apart. Silently, as if something invisible was eating through it from the inside. Breaking apart and dissolving into faint blue motes that drifted and winked like fireflies.
All of Soul Society was built from reishi. Every structure, every surface, every object.
Which raised a fairly direct question.
Why was Bankai use forbidden inside the Seireitei?
The reason was simple.
"A collapse phenomenon..."
Aizen Sosuke raised one hand and adjusted his glasses. His tone had shifted into something that was, for him, rare: genuine excitement, almost barely contained.
"A single Academy student. A Shinigami who has only just achieved Shikai for the first time. And yet here, in this moment, he is displaying captain-level power, and through his ability alone is producing the kind of natural phenomenon that only Bankai generates..."
His lips pressed together, and the pleasure underneath them was not something he was making any effort to conceal.
"Tosen. Do you understand what this means?"
Tosen, reading his leader's mood correctly, shook his head. He had been tense a moment ago. That had completely dissolved.
This person doesn't need any help at all. He's operating at a completely different level.
"I don't, sir."
"We have found a once-in-a-generation genius."
And that person was their most important ally.
Was there any better news than that?
While the two of them processed this with quiet satisfaction, Soifon had already started moving people.
"Everyone out! Get clear now! Move, or stay and die! This area is dangerous!"
The fundamental nature of a spirit body was reishi. For ordinary souls without significant power of their own, simply being within the effective range of a Bankai could be lethal. The reishi composing their bodies would start to dissolve. It had happened before.
Having spent years as Yoruichi's personal guard, Soifon's sensitivity to this kind of thing was considerably sharper than an ordinary squad member's. She looked at the Squad 11 members who were still standing around looking confused and her patience ran out.
"Get them out! Are you trying to die too? Move!"
The Squad 11 members started moving, which relieved some of the chaos.
Soifon used the moment to look at the two figures still facing each other. If it were possible, she would stop this right now. But the situation had already moved past anything she could influence. What came next was unknown.
...
Kijishi Kenpachi was frightened.
He was a captain. That was not supposed to be something he felt in a situation like this.
But the thing taking shape above his head was communicating its threat to him in terms that left nothing to interpretation. The pressure of it was absolute and he could not dismiss it.
Running had crossed his mind. He would not be admitting that to anyone.
But the answer was no, because he could feel it. The reishi around him had been locked onto him as a target. The air was drawing tight, something sharp and hostile hovering at the edge of his forehead, and cold sweat was running freely. If he moved to attack first, he would only accelerate the formation of whatever was coming.
Negotiating?
"You... what is that?"
Matsushita Yusuke did not respond.
He was looking down at his own index finger with an expression that suggested he was somewhere else entirely. Something was forming at the edge of his thinking. The way abilities deepened over time, the way understanding accumulated and shifted, the way a flash of something arrived and had to be caught before it was gone.
Something was about to break through.
He was somewhere inside that moment.
And overhead, the Modified Kurohitsugi completed its formation.
It began to pour.
Black. Mud-thick. Falling from above.
The air itself seemed to absorb its color, darkening with a deep and sunless quality that had no equivalent.
Where the black mass touched the ground, everyone present felt it without needing to look: the earth began to sink. Soundlessly. Without resistance.
Someone at the edge of the area was not fast enough. Their clothing caught a trailing edge of the black current.
One breath.
The sleeve was gone. Dissolved, silently, without leaving anything behind.
The black mass kept moving upward, patient, endless, consuming without hurry, moving toward the rest of the figure it had caught.
"Get clear!"
A voice from close range. A blade flashed, and Soifon cut away the attached section of clothing in a single stroke. The severed fabric fell.
It did not reach the ground. It was absorbed completely before it got there.
The Squad 11 member registered what had nearly happened a full second after it did, let out a sound, and scrambled away without any dignity.
Soifon had no attention to spare for them. Her eyes were on the two figures at the center.
Where was Kijishi?
He had been the primary target. He had been swallowed by the black mass almost immediately, vanishing into it without any visible trace.
And on the other side, Matsushita Yusuke stood in a slow current of blue reishi, his presence carrying a quality that had not been there before.
Not power, exactly.
More like distance.
Like something that had stepped back from everything around it and was looking at the world from somewhere further away. Not the person she knew day to day. Something more removed.
"What did this idiot do..."
She briefly considered contacting Yoruichi. Quickly, the competing pull of obligation and personal need tangled against each other in her chest. Was asking Yoruichi to come and deal with a mess she had gotten herself into really the right call?
She did not have time to reach a conclusion.
Because a roar arrived and made the decision irrelevant.
"Bankai!"
Bang.
The black mass was blown apart all at once.
Kijishi Kenpachi stood in the wreckage of it, scorched, ragged, and absolutely furious. His reiatsu was climbing again, higher and wilder, and the sound coming out of him had gone past rage into something that had no more structure.
"You did this! You made me do this, you little wretch! I'm going to tear you into pieces!"
Bankai.
The situation had just left any remaining boundary behind and kept going.
This was not what anyone had agreed to.
Soifon was about to speak. Before she could, Matsushita Yusuke had already arrived at his answer.
His right thumb extended outward.
So it's Bankai.
Not bad actually.
This gives me a chance to try out what I just figured out.
He turned his palm flat, fingers together, thumb out, hand shaped like a blade. His expression was completely calm as he looked at Kijishi coming back to a boil.
His lips parted. The words came out like something said half in sleep.
"Ittō Kasō."
The scene stood at the edge of collapse. Both of them had reached their boiling point.