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 ca back was sothing 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 co apart. Silently, as if sothing 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 phenonon..."
Aizen Sosuke raised one hand and adjusted his glasses. His tone had shifted into sothing that was, for him, rare: genuine excitent, almost barely contained.
"A single Academy student. A Shinigami who has only just achieved Shikai for the first ti. And yet here, in this mont, he is displaying captain-level power, and through his ability alone is producing the kind of natural phenonon that only Bankai generates..."
His lips pressed together, and the pleasure underneath them was not sothing he was making any effort to conceal.
"Tosen. Do you understand what this ans?"
Tosen, reading his leader's mood correctly, shook his head. He had been tense a mont 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 fundantal 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 mber's. She looked at the Squad 11 mbers 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 mbers started moving, which relieved so of the chaos.
Soifon used the mont 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 ca next was unknown.
...
Kijishi Kenpachi was frightened.
He was a captain. That was not supposed to be sothing 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, sothing 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 sowhere else entirely. Sothing was forming at the edge of his thinking. The way abilities deepened over ti, the way understanding accumulated and shifted, the way a flash of sothing arrived and had to be caught before it was gone.
Sothing was about to break through.
He was sowhere inside that mont.
And overhead, the Modified Kurohitsugi completed its formation.
It began to pour.
Black. Mud-thick. Falling from above.
The air itself seed 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.
Soone 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 mber 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 imdiately, 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 sothing that had stepped back from everything around it and was looking at the world from sowhere further away. Not the person she knew day to day. Sothing 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 co and deal with a ss she had gotten herself into really the right call?
She did not have ti 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 sothing that had no more structure.
"You did this! You made 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 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 ca out like sothing said half in sleep.
"Ittō Kasō."
The scene stood at the edge of collapse. Both of them had reached their boiling point.
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