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Chapter 090: Wreckage
As a general rule, Hado spells grew more powerful the higher their number. The closer to 100, the greater the destructive output.
High-level techniques typically required incantation to reach their full potential, building through the chant to mix reiatsu into the precise composition the spell demanded before releasing.
But certain Hado existed in a different category entirely.
Forbidden techniques.
Part of the reason was straightforward: the power involved was significant enough to require active restriction.
As in, for instance, right now.
A sound, sharp and brief.
In Matsushita Yusuke's palm, visible to everyone watching, a point of light appeared. Brilliant and small, the way a flame looks at its first moment. It twisted and climbed, spreading outward the way a drop of ink spreads through water, unfurling without hurry.
The fire began to build.
And it kept changing as it built.
Orange-red, deepening to crimson, until the light that saturated everything around it took on a color that was unmistakably blood.
Matsushita Yusuke was swallowed entirely by the rising pillar of it. Gone, consumed, invisible inside the light.
The wave of heat that rolled outward from the center crossed the distance to Kijishi Kenpachi in an instant. Even with Bankai announced, there was no resistance to offer against this, not in any timeframe that mattered. He was swallowed by the heat the same way.
Both of them disappeared.
Soifon was still working on evacuation when she realized it had become unnecessary.
The spread had stopped.
The fire was no longer expanding outward. Instead it was pulling inward, rising straight up, boiling and churning vertically. The destructive force that had nowhere to go was being compressed instead, and the outer ring of flame held its boiling shape while the core at the center became something brighter and more concentrated, throwing off a deep red radiance that was nearly impossible to look at directly.
BOOM—!!!
Heat and light drove upward and twisted in the air, and inside the column, at the very top, the outline of a blade tip was faintly visible.
Soifon watched it and swallowed once, and took half a step back without deciding to.
That was a reasonable response. In front of something that operated at this scale, keeping a normal expression was not something many people in all of Soul Society could manage.
But her rationality came back. She blinked. One palm came up and tapped her own cheek.
This was not the moment to stand there looking at it.
What was the result? That was the only thing that mattered right now.
If someone had died, the fallout from that alone... no, more immediately: this was a student against a captain. How had it reached this point? How was she supposed to even begin to explain that chain of events to anyone?
Standing in that wall of heat, Soifon felt her brain starting to approach the same state as the air around her.
On the other side of the street, Aizen Sosuke had been watching all of it, and the expression on his face was something that might, on anyone else, have been called admiration.
Impressive.
"After deploying a Kido at this level, he still had the presence of mind to contain the force entirely within a defined range. That kind of talent requires no qualification."
Tosen was visibly not following.
"Isn't that... a natural occurrence?"
"Right, you probably haven't seen this before."
Aizen's interest was fully engaged. He adjusted his glasses, and the smile that spread across his face was more open than usual, the tone more animated.
"Standard practice caps Hado transmission at number 90 and above, locking those techniques away. What do you think the reason is?"
The boss was in an unusually good mood. The correct response was to let him continue.
"I don't know, sir."
"Because the power involved resists control."
Aizen watched the boiling column of fire as it began to slowly settle, the fire-red reflected in his eyes, his voice completely level.
"High-level Hado require incantation, structural precision, careful reishi composition to build toward their full form. The price of that power is complexity. Following the standard process exactly is not actually how you reach the technique's real capability."
Selective incantation. Skipping sections. Layering in personal understanding, making the reishi composition more precise at each stage rather than less.
The number of ways to approach it was genuinely uncountable.
"The first high-level technique I ever engaged with seriously was Kurohitsugi. That's why Hado #90 left the deepest impression on me. For me, Kido was never just an expression of power. It was always a way of understanding yourself."
That framing was new enough that Tosen had clearly not encountered it before. He looked down, sat with it for a moment, and eventually opened his mouth with an expression that was somewhere between thoughtful and confused.
Was Kido really that much of an art form?
He did not get to finish the thought.
The fire in the distance had started to pull back.
It was brilliant and vivid while it lasted. But it had not formed on its own. Like a wave that arrives with enormous force and then recedes just as completely, it faded without leaving anything to mark where it had been.
Nobody needed to be told. Every eye in the area moved back to the two figures at the center.
What was the result?
The first person visible was Kijishi Kenpachi.
His haori was destroyed. Burns across his body in multiple places, each one clearly outlined. He was moving unevenly, off-balance, struggling to stay upright, until he wasn't.
One knee hit the ground.
He had announced Bankai. He was on his knee. His reiatsu, which had been surging only moments ago, was flagging visibly.
Why?
For most people watching, it was a difficult thing to parse. For Aizen, the explanation was immediate.
"His release state was forced through under pressure, and external force was enough to push it back out? His Bankai was undone by a single attack?"
The expression on Aizen's face was not quite a smile and not quite something else. The contempt in his voice was not something he was bothering to keep out.
"I had a low opinion of him already, but I didn't realize the ceiling was this low. Well." A short pause. "Looks like the right opponent was chosen after all."
Across the street, the reactions were less measured.
"Captain?!"
"Captain, are you alright!"
"Get out of the way! Move, all of you!"
The Squad 11 members were trying to push through. Soifon stepped in front of them.
"Nobody moves."
The reason was simple. The fire had not fully cleared. Matsushita Yusuke's condition was unknown, and she was not about to let anyone else into that space, least of all Squad 11.
She held her position and glanced back over her shoulder.
Kijishi had emerged. So where was the other one?
He hadn't actually been burned away entirely, had he?
"Hey! Are you alive in there?!"
A beat of silence.
Then, from inside what remained of the light, a familiar voice.
"Cough, cough... more or less."
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