The Kikaigai thrumming eagerly in her hand, Soifon rose slowly into the air until she was hovering at the same height as the Captain-Commander.
The Captain-Commander opened his eyes wide and studied the mysterious crystal in Soifon's grip. He could sense a spatial force emanating from it—similar in nature to a Garganta, yet wholly unlike the power of a Hollow.
"I don't know either," Soifon said with a shrug, and slowly began pouring her Reiatsu into the Kikaigai...
Bzzzt.
The Kikaigai shuddered violently. The blue crystal, flooded with Soifon's Reiatsu, erupted in a blinding golden radiance—then condensed into a solid pillar of light that tore itself free of her grip with a sharp whoosh and rocketed straight into the sky.
Wherever the beam passed, the heavens were ripped apart at a speed visible to the naked eye. The fissure spread at a furious pace, spanning the entire sky above the replica Karakura Town in an instant.
Then—fragments peeled away, and a sky utterly unlike the World of the Living revealed itself through the crack.
Even from a distance, one could clearly make out the iconic architecture of Seireitei—and the commanding silhouette of the First Division barracks standing tall.
"Soul Society..."
The Captain-Commander immediately recognized the rich, familiar scent of Spirit Particles.
"The sky of Soul Society—up there?"
Unohana Retsu, who had been tending to the wounded, raised her head and murmured in disbelief.
The pillar of light did not stop after piercing the barrier between the World of the Living and Soul Society. It pressed on without pause, shooting still higher into Soul Society's sky.
A sudden sense of dread gripped the Captain-Commander.
Don't tell me that thing is headed for the Royal Palace—?!
He cast a meaningful glance toward Soifon, not far away. The pieces clicked together in his mind—Ichibē Hyōsube's intervention, the hint pointing toward a method to ascend to the Royal Palace—assembling into a possibility he could no longer ignore.
—Could it be... that Soifon is the next recruit for the Zero Division?!
No. The Captain-Commander immediately struck that thought from his mind.
Meanwhile, down below, Aizen raised his head. High above in the skies of Soul Society, he could feel it—a towering, sublime presence hanging far up above.
"Aizen!" Soifon's voice rang down from high in the sky. "Didn't you want to reach the Royal Palace? Keep up."
Before the last word had finished falling, Soifon flickered—and beneath her feet, spiraling disc-shaped formations of Spirit Particles materialized. Riding them like a skateboard, she shot toward the rift torn across the sky—intending to pass directly through the fissure, return to Soul Society, and ascend to the Royal Palace itself!
Aizen's figure vanished from where he stood in the same instant, following after Soifon's dark silhouette.
"Hold it!" The Captain-Commander's furious shout cracked through the air. "Soifon! Do you truly intend to bring Sōsuke Aizen to the Royal Palace?!"
He had no particular objection to Soifon going up—after all, the person above had already given him advance notice. But Aizen...
Inside the passage, Soifon's figure paused—just slightly.
She turned her face to the side and glanced back at the Captain-Commander below, who was seething with fury. A mischievous smile curled at the corner of her mouth.
"That's right, Captain-Commander."
"This too... is that person's order."
With that, Soifon did not look back again. She plunged upward toward the skies of Soul Society—leaving the Captain-Commander standing alone below, left to unravel the riddle by himself.
That person... who...?
Ichibē Hyōsube?
That didn't quite fit. Given Soifon's general attitude, her opinion of Ichibē Hyōsube probably wasn't much better.
Which left only one answer.
Hss—
The Captain-Commander drew a sharp breath of cold air. Well—in that case, it was no longer strange at all.
He stopped agonizing over Sōsuke Aizen following in Soifon's wake. With a wave of his hand, he turned to the Gotei 13 members assembled below and called out: "Return to Soul Society!"
Almost simultaneously, several figures launched themselves from the ground. Every Shinigami still capable of movement gathered the wounded beside them and rushed toward the rift in the sky leading back to Soul Society.
Some time passed. The golden light faded entirely, and the rift in the sky sealed over like a receding tide.
The World of the Living's sky returned to its original deep blue—as though the miraculous passage connecting both worlds had never existed at all.
---
Inside Soul Society, the channel bored upward by the Kikaigai had already taken shape—yet it bore no resemblance to a conventional, straight road.
Above Seireitei, a perfectly vertical golden tube rose into the heavens, its end invisible no matter how far one strained to look.
"To think that Captain Soifon possesses a direct route to the Royal Palace... this is truly... astonishing."
Aizen followed close behind Soifon, tilting his head back to gaze up at the passage that seemed to have no end.
Even with his 4th-stage Hōgyoku fusion form, Aizen could not see its terminus. What hope would an ordinary captain-level Shinigami have?
Even if the path to the Royal Palace were opened, Aizen suspected that very few Shinigami would be capable of climbing it on their own power alone.
"Hasn't Captain Aizen always had such confidence in me?"
"So why the surprise over something so trivial?"
Soifon bent her knees slightly—then shot upward at high speed, entering the golden passage.
Aizen blinked, momentarily taken aback. Something trivial...?
He had gone to extraordinary lengths—planned the sacrifice of Karakura Town, worked to forge the Ōken—all to ascend to the Royal Palace. And for Soifon, that was apparently a trivial matter?
But then, he thought of that sixteen-year-old—Ichigo Kurosaki—who had already been able to overwhelm him with ease, and Sōsuke Aizen quietly let it go.
If he possessed talent that surpassed the vast majority of Shinigami, why should he deny that others might possess talent that surpassed even him?
With that thought settled, he too began moving at high speed through spatial displacement, following after Soifon in the direction of the Royal Palace.
The two of them moved at extraordinary speed. In the blink of an eye, they had broken through Soul Society's cloud layer and were closing in on the Royal Palace, wrapped in layer upon layer of seals and barriers.
A faint golden halo radiated from Soifon's body. Her flight speed had grown impossible to track with the naked eye—the waves of air she cut through threw up ring after ring of white halos in her wake.
With each increase in altitude, the oppressive weight bearing down from the Royal Palace grew heavier, and the Reiryoku consumed by high-speed movement grew ever greater.
Sōsuke Aizen even began resorting to the butterfly wings on his back, flapping them in earnest.
He was beginning to revise his earlier assessment. Reaching the Royal Palace was absolutely not as simple as he had imagined—or rather...
This surely could not be the only way to ascend to the Royal Palace!
Right—the Shiba family cannon...
Sōsuke Aizen understood at last. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had walked right into one of Soifon's little traps—but he couldn't bring himself to say so out loud, since the two of them had already been flying for quite some time.
After a long while, Soifon glanced down as she flew, and took in Aizen's face—already beaded with sweat on his forehead. In a tone of barely concealed schadenfreude, she said: "Captain Aizen, would you like some help?"
"That won't be necessary..." Aizen's wings flapped with somewhat greater vigor. "This too... is a necessary part of evolution."
---
Down on the ground.
The Captain-Commander leaned on Ryūjin Jakka and gazed up at the long-vanished trail in the sky above.
"Why not just use the Shiba family cannon... insisting on making things needlessly hard for themselves..."
Of course, the Captain-Commander had had absolutely no intention of pointing that out. If only he could watch Soifon and the rest of them come tumbling back down from above—that would have been most satisfying.
...
---
The Royal Palace main approach.
Soifon emerged from the golden passage with the butterfly-winged Aizen trailing behind her, and the two of them touched down on a fan-shaped island floating suspended in the sky.
"This is... the Royal—..."
The instant Sōsuke Aizen's feet touched ground, he swept his gaze immediately across the surroundings.
The first thing to meet his eyes was the great hall of the Royal Palace—suspended high overhead like a towering pillar. Encircling it on all sides were the four separate palace-islands belonging to the members of the Zero Division.
Then, in a flash, five figures descended from above the two of them.
"It's been a while, Soifon."
The bald monk at their head—Ichibē Hyōsube—stepped forward, flicked a brief glance at Aizen, then fixed his gaze squarely on Soifon.
---
PS: Woke up with a cold yesterday—head was spinning, could only manage two chapters before taking medicine and going to sleep. Woke up today feeling much better; tomorrow's update should be back to six thousand characters, no problem.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Group chat of the Dead
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone