Seireitei sprawled wide, but wasn't densely peopled. The twelve divisions' wards ringed the city center around First Division; half the rest of the land lay unused. No one had even drawn up a plan to rebuild abandoned old districts.
Shinomiya and Ichigo used shunpō to clear the wards and reach one such derelict quarter—empty houses, dead trees. Neither spared the desolation a thought. They both looked to the old man up ahead, sitting with a cane like any humble grandpa.
"Legs like that at his age—guess that's the Head Captain for you," Shinomiya muttered, thinking back. They'd fled first—yet somehow the old man had cut straight ahead and beaten them here, hemming them in.
In other words, this wasn't the battlefield they chose. It was the battlefield the Head Captain chose.
"Shinomiya, know what I'm thinking?" Ichigo asked quietly.
"Don't tell me you're scared."
"You got me…"
Ichigo breathed deep, jaw tight. "Feels like getting caught ditching class. Which… shouldn't bother me this much."
"That's because they were just teachers to you. This man spread that education across Soul Society—and leads the Shinigami," Shinomiya said, bored on the surface.
Yamamoto rose. His voice—no louder than before—cut like a blade.
"I'll grant you this much: at your age, even my shunpō cannot match yours. In a million years, none have outstripped such talent."
"Yet precisely for that reason, I cannot abide my finest students since the founding of the Shin'ō Academy—perhaps the finest there will ever be—straying from the path."
"So I came here—to take you in before you commit worse crimes."
He didn't flare his reiatsu. He didn't shout. Just standing there—just speaking—Shinomiya felt a pressure like nothing he'd ever known. The old man's presence filled the world to the horizon. He seemed to pin the sky and earth under his feet.
"Shinomiya Zun. Kurosaki Ichigo. Do you remember my teachings?"
"Of course I do," Shinomiya said, face blank.
"I'm no good at playing dumb, so I'll be straight. The power of a Shinigami remade me. I'm grateful. I like the Shinigami. Because of that, I can't stomach powerless men—men who aren't even Shinigami—sitting above us, holding our lives and deaths in their hands. It makes all the feelings I've had about Shinigami—my respect for the job, my fondness for the Gotei—feel cheap."
"I'll drag them out of those chairs and throw them onto the front lines. Whoever survives can talk. But they don't get those seats back—because those seats should never have existed."
Yamamoto's eyes opened fully. Weathered by ages yet lucid and keen, they reflected the young man blazing like a furnace—fire that would incinerate any foe of his side, that would wear the mask of necessary evil without flinching, head high and proud, a terror to enemies.
"I remember too," Ichigo said after him, voice clear.
"Rukia is a Shinigami. Protecting Karakura Town is her job. No 'credit' for that. But it's my hometown. My family and friends live there. Rukia saved Inoue, then pulled her in to keep protecting Karakura. In a way, she protected my family for me. I'm grateful."
"So I can't accept a hundred years in a cell—let alone death for that reason."
"I want to save Rukia. I want to help Orihime repay the debt."
"Beyond that… what they wanted to do is exactly what I wanted to do. If I stand here and watch them suffer, I'll regret it so much I'll reject my own thoughts—and I won't be myself anymore."
"You told me that kind of 'growth' would cause trouble for others and for Seireitei. That's why you told me to get stronger. I did."
"I trained hard to save Rukia. To overturn this verdict. To keep from 'growing' out of regret and causing a disaster for everyone."
"Head Captain… was I wrong?"
Yamamoto went silent again—not because he had no answer but because he recognized something: the auras of these two prodigies had changed. Fear and nerves had burned away the moment they spoke their truths. Calm rolled in—the kind with a storm beneath it.
Resolve.
For men who have resolved themselves, words are useless. And a peerless elder has no interest in wasting them. His sight is the history of the Gotei 13. History tells him what to do now.
Cloth snapped. He spread his arms—the white haori with the single "1" lifted and sailed to hang from a high pole, a symbol of absolute authority fluttering above.
"—!"
He stripped off his top. The body beneath looked lean, but the corded muscle and map of scars told another story. The cane's casing fell away, revealing a plain, time-worn asauchi in their eyes until his hand closed on the hilt—
—and a pillar of fire roared to the heavens behind him.
Reiatsu. Pure, blistering, terrifying reiatsu—leveling the clouds and painting the sky red like a sea of fire hung upside-down.
"Come, brats. Show me the valor with which you defy Soul Society's ancient order. If it's only talk… I'll retract my praise."
The two said nothing and took their stances. Shinomiya lowered his center of gravity until it fairly vibrated with attack. Ichigo clenched his sword; the air boomed around him.
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