The heat wave arrived with a howl and blew Matsushita Yusuke's hair out behind him.
His own reiatsu wouldn't burn him, but at this range, the aftermath reached him anyway.
Also:
He looked down at his right hand.
Visible to the naked eye: cracks beginning at the tips of all five fingers, splitting open.
Snap. Crack.
Yusuke's skin broke apart like rubble, the surface color deteriorating at visible speed, drying out, splitting further.
Everyone watching registered this. Nobody showed any surprise.
Ittō Kasō was classified as a sacrificial Hado for a reason. Sothing had to be exchanged for its destructive power. This outco had always been part of the equation.
But those watching noticed sothing different.
"The damaged area is a little off?"
"Didn't spread to the whole arm. Concentrated in the palm and the front half of the forearm."
"Can you control that? Isn't Ittō Kasō supposed to be a fixed form? This can be adjusted?"
Everyone looked at each other, and eventually Tsukabishi Tessai answered quietly.
"It's possible. Yes, that possibility exists."
The reasoning was simple.
"This young man's understanding of Kido is uniquely his own. He can modify the working chanics of high-level Hado. Honestly, these are things even I cannot do."
Sowhat embarrassing to say out loud.
"I'm not at his level."
The Kido Corps: a group defined by the deep study of Kido. That the leading figure among them was saying this from genuine conviction produced different expressions across everyone present.
Surprise. Disbelief. Quiet consideration. Sothing closer to being entertained.
Different thoughts running like currents beneath the sa surface, spiraling, converging on the single point nad Matsushita Yusuke.
What else can this person do?
Nobody said anything. They watched.
Inside the fight:
Matsushita Yusuke's mouth was slightly open, breathing in shallow intervals.
Shingonkai's ability was as convenient as it was demanding. Short window, push the reiatsu as far as it goes, hit as hard as possible, overwhelm the opponent before anything can recover. To pull that off, Yusuke had thoroughly exhausted his remaining reserves.
Good thing he had put in the training.
In the last fight he would have dropped the mont Ittō Kasō fired. Not this ti.
Thinking that, he looked down at his right hand.
The carbonization was expected. He had a better solution for it now than he had then.
"Restore."
The word left him.
Two azure light bands appeared without a sound, like living things clinging to his skin, winding around his right hand silently.
The deterioration stopped. Blue light flowed inward, like sothing breathing, seeping bit by bit into the cracked and carbonized surface.
Flesh and blood transforming. Like new growth pushing from green stems, soft pink outlines appearing one after another, like a cicada pushing free of its old shell, arriving in complete form before everyone watching.
From a distance, Aizen Sosuke's eyes opened slightly, sothing in them that wasn't its usual quality.
"This is—"
Tsukabishi Tessai's reaction was identical.
"He used reiatsu to protect the innermost bones while Ittō Kasō was firing. Very clever. Very clever indeed!"
He didn't wait to be asked and continued unprompted.
"Soone ntioned he can achieve full limb reconstruction directly with reishi. Compared to that thod, this is considerably simpler and costs far less!"
His tone shifted into sothing close to excitent. The feeling of being genuinely outpaced by soone younger surfaced quietly and unmistakably.
"With the core preserved, all that remains is building the exterior!"
Thinking of this approach wasn't rare in itself. The part that mattered was the action, and the speed of that in-fight response.
A genius who stops moving isn't worth fearing. A genius who keeps pushing forward like a stubborn fool: that was what actually deserved to be called remarkable.
Without question: the Matsushita Yusuke in front of them right now was the latter.
Even Yamamoto, who had been sitting with his eyes low in a way that looked like sleep, raised his head slightly and glanced once at the young man's silhouette across the distance.
"Not bad."
The Commander-General's two words were worth more than anything longer.
Inside the fight, Yusuke couldn't hear any of it. His attention was entirely on what was in front of him.
He raised his right hand and repeated the motion of gripping and releasing.
Intact. No residual effects. The attempt had worked.
And secondly:
The borrowed reiatsu still had sothing left. Body in good condition.
He even had room for another round if it ca to that.
But what was the opponent's condition?
He narrowed his eyes and looked toward the direction the heat was still dissipating from.
It might sound arrogant, but a bombardnt at that level, even with Aizen on the receiving end: blowing holes in his outer coat would not have been a problem.
A bottom-tier captain like Kijishi would be even less likely to walk through it unaffected. It wasn't out of the question that it had already settled things.
The very next mont:
A heart-stopping burst of reiatsu erupted like a geyser, tearing through the residual heat that hadn't fully dispersed.
Yusuke raised his hand in front of his face, left hand shading his eyes, and narrowed them.
That kind of presence. Seems like he's in decent shape.
"You little brat!"
Kijishi's voice tore through the aftermath. A figure covered in black smoke stumbled forward.
Severe burns across the entire body. Heavily injured by any asure.
But his voice was getting louder.
"I crawled back from hell!!!"
Boom!
Purple-red electrical light surged and crackled, releasing a pressure that was more alarming than anything before it.
Yusuke caught that shift imdiately.
Kijishi's reiatsu is rising.
What did he do?
The charred outer shell cracked. Kijishi's bloodied, mangled grin surfaced from behind it.
"You can't kill ! In my Bankai state, nothing kills . Every attack you land just becos fuel. Nourishnt. I get stronger!"
The fierce burning reiatsu wrapped around him was its own proof.
"Hey! Kid!"
Kijishi swung the cleaver, roaring.
"If you want to beat , use your weapon. Fight like a man. Co and have a real slaughter!"
What is this guy on about.
Out-of-character statents usually only ant one thing: he's setting a trap.
He wants to close the gap. lee range.
This level of provocation wasn't worth anything. And Kijishi's perford boldness had cracks all through it.
He's not coming at because he's afraid I still have Hado left. He's still wary.
The damage had been real. Sowhere not easy to see, Kijishi had paid a cost.
And correspondingly: was he really invincible right now? Yusuke didn't buy it.
To put it plainly: Aizen couldn't pull sothing like that off. Kijishi had even less basis for it.
He's hiding sothing about how his ability works.
But for the mont, Yusuke had no obvious other approach.
Because from what was visible, the opponent was genuinely getting stronger through the fight.
So what was the correct move?
Thoughts rose. Settled.
In one mont, he had his answer.
He simply and calmly extended his right hand toward Kijishi again.
There's no such thing as an invincible body.
The Royal Guard themselves couldn't guarantee that in the Thousand Year Blood War. What makes you think you've managed it?
What he needed to do was simple enough.
He took a quiet breath.
Rotated his right hand, palm facing up. Thumb, middle finger, and index finger touching together in a contained gesture.
Let's try this.
What was he doing?
Nobody knew. They could only watch as Matsushita Yusuke held the position and then:
A small, trembling ball of black light erged silently from between his fingertips.
Nobody could say what exactly it was. Pitch-black. Contained. Like countless threads of black ink wound tight around each other, biting, coiling, like sothing that had taken the shape of consequence itself. Exuding a viscous, inhuman quality that had no clean category.
"This technique I was still working on. But this seems like as good a ti as any."
Hiss.
The sound barely arrived before sothing invisible swallowed it completely.
The silence that followed was the silence of a dead room. And beneath it, the reiatsu was climbing.
Light, heat, wind. Even air. All of it bending toward the black sphere at his fingertips, drawn backward into it.
Yusuke's hair was flying in every direction. His expression was perfectly level.
He poured almost everything remaining into it. The black sphere expanded instantly, reaching roughly the size of a fist.
The pressure within it caused every person present to shift.
Sasakibe Chojiro stepped forward and made himself heard.
"All Gotei 13 mbers: reinforce the barrier!"
Soone without the instincts to read the situation dared to ask:
"What is that? Why are we reinforcing? Could Matsushita Yusuke actually break through a barrier at this level?"
"Actually, hard to say."
Hirako Shinji's expression was no longer the relaxed one from earlier. He was on his feet, right hand raised, reinforcing the barrier himself.
"That thing is not Hado."
Firm tone. He repeated it like a statent of fact.
"It's not any Kido technique currently known to us either. What exactly is this person doing?"
"So what is it?"
"A highly compressed mass of reiatsu would be the most accurate way to describe it."
Aizen added.
He adjusted his glasses and looked into the fight area with an expression that wasn't his usual one. Excitent that was barely held back. An anticipation that was, in the most literal sense, difficult to contain.
Losing composure wasn't sothing that happened to him often. It was happening now.
"Reishi is everywhere, but completely utilizing it is no simple thing. Let alone compressing it by force. To put it simply: take the entire Seireitei and put it in a room the size of three-and-a-half tatami mats. That framing might be more accurate."
"How is that even possible?!"
"I think the sa. Which is why Kido has always fascinated ."
Arranging reishi in specific patterns, combining them, producing entirely different effects from what was there before.
And right now:
Yusuke was attempting exactly that.
"To compress reiatsu of this scale into a stable concentrated mass: how much effort and focus do you think that requires?"
Aizen Sosuke asked the question without expecting an answer.
Because it was nearly a question directed at himself.
Since I don't know either: let watch. What exactly can you do.
Inside the fight, across the space, Kijishi's bloodied face showed sothing it hadn't before.
Panic.
"You—!"
Even at captain level, he could feel what was inside that sphere.
Rush him first? Pointless.
The energy had already ford. Even without being fired, what was stored would erupt on its own. Distance was just a question of how close.
"Using that at this range: you're not walking away from this clean either!"
"I don't care."
Matsushita Yusuke's tone was flat.
"You're the confident one. Invincible body. Gets stronger in battle. Fine. Show your limit.
And by the way— This is a technique I made myself. You're the first one to experience it. Feel honored."
His hair was flying in every direction. The smile on his face had sothing unhinged in it.
Back to the question.
Not enough firepower? Then add more.
Snap.
One crisp sound, and Yusuke's full reiatsu gathered and erupted at once, surging around him like sothing brilliant and brief.
This was a technique evolved from Cero, and one that Matsushita Yusuke had integrated, processed, and completely made his own: an attack thod existing outside his established system.
Its na:
Kido #90: Reishi Flash.
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