Chapter 048: There's a Spitting Phase Too?
Matsushita Yusuke wiped the cold sweat off the back of his head.
Good news and bad news.
Good news: the provocation had worked. Soifon was completely done listening to reason and would not be backing out of this fight under any circumstances.
Bad news: it had worked too well.
She looked like she actually wanted to kill him.
Watching the reiatsu turbulence rolling off her, Matsushita Yusuke had the distinct feeling that things had moved slightly outside his planned parameters.
Did she have to get this mad? Could they maybe...
Was it too late to negotiate?
He didn't get to find out.
Soifon bent at the waist. No visible transition. She simply ceased to be where she was standing.
One blink.
Like a video with frames removed, she covered the full distance and arrived directly in front of him.
"...!"
No words. No eye contact worth mentioning.
She drove her right hand forward like lightning, the speed of it cutting through the air like a streak of black.
What is that?!
It's almost too fast to see!
He wanted very badly to say that out loud, but his survival instinct had better priorities. Matsushita Yusuke raised his blade and swept it up and outward at an angle.
CLANG!
A burst of sparks. Both of them absorbed the impact and were pushed back several steps.
Well. Soifon was pushed back further.
Her speed had gotten another boost from Shikai, but the tradeoff was that the blade at her fingertip had considerably less structural hardness than an actual sword. The thing looked more delicate than a box cutter. In a direct collision of force, that was going to show.
So. Create distance, then—
The thought didn't land.
Soifon, still mid-retreat, snapped her body into a sharp turn. Like something compressed and then released, she used the backward momentum as a push-off, pivoted, and drove forward at him again.
Clean. Efficient. Flashy enough to deserve actual credit.
Matsushita Yusuke felt the pressure of it regardless.
She is way too agile.
He gritted his teeth and started reaching for a Kido to keep her at range.
Then Soifon tilted her chin up slightly, drew a short breath, and spat.
What is she doing? Is she spitting at me?
Should I dodge that? Should I not? This is extremely awkward—
Wait. That is not spit.
A dark streak of light, slick as oil, punched through the air and came straight at his face.
She had a projectile in her mouth?
He had no time for a chant. Not that he needed one.
His left hand came up and touched the space in front of him lightly. At the tip of his index finger, a faint and precise outline took shape.
Kido #1: Burst.
Three fire-attribute Hado, fused. Designed purely for increased output.
This was the first original Kido Matsushita Yusuke had built from scratch.
A breath.
The air visibly contracted around his hand. The gathered light and heat coiled at his fingertip, churning, bright and compressed.
This one was different from his other modifications. Because it involved combining offensive Hado types, which was significantly more complicated than anything he'd done before, he'd built in what amounted to a safety release. A two-stage system.
Stage one: gather the energy, hold it in place.
Stage two: fire.
He raised his left hand, index finger extended, pointed directly at the Soifon charging toward him.
Here it comes. Eat this.
The ball of light launched like a bullet. As it traveled, the layered energies inside it found each other and ignited, and the whole thing began expanding at speed.
"...!"
Soifon's expression changed immediately.
She hadn't seen this coming at all.
Still no chant. But the output was close to a Hado in the thirties. Or forties?!
Committing to a straight charge in the middle of a miscalculation was not smart. Soifon threw herself into a hard redirect, wrenching her direction of travel sideways just enough to let the fireball past.
"Gh!"
Not quite enough.
The left side of her body made contact. The flame grazed the full length of her arm, and the skin came up red along the whole surface, scalded, the way skin looked after something very hot had come too close.
That was after she'd pushed reishi to the surface as a defensive measure.
Without that, the flesh would have charred.
Like what happened to those two Hollows back in the Rukongai.
But even with all of that.
She'd made it through.
And the most problematic thing about fighting Matsushita Yusuke was the Kido. The volume of it, the variety of it, the ways it kept coming from angles you hadn't accounted for. That was the actual threat.
But all of that had one solution: get in close.
Hado was a ranged tool. At close quarters, it was a liability. If she could take away his space, she took away his options.
She needed to hold the inside position.
She drove forward with her mind made up, no hesitation left.
And Matsushita Yusuke charged directly at her.
Which she had not expected at all.
But there it was. His expression was tight, and he was moving in, not back.
Because there was no time to set up a second Kido.
Taking close quarters with a Shinigami in Shikai meant one thing: you had to get there first and stay there.
How?
He reached out and grabbed Soifon's right hand.
That Zanpakuto was like a wasp's stinger. Dangerous, but only if it could reach you.
"You—"
Soifon looked genuinely stunned. Fighting this person was never once what she would describe as normal.
Her momentum had fully committed to the forward charge. She had nothing left to redirect. In that precise sliver of a moment, when the old force was spent and the new one hadn't come yet, there was no resistance left in her.
That was the window.
Matsushita Yusuke turned his body, braced, and threw her.
Over his shoulder, full weight, no holding back.
Soifon's silhouette swept through a half-arc in the air.
BANG!
She hit the floor hard.
Gravity plus no time to brace properly. Staying conscious after a landing like that would have been an achievement.
That was how it should have ended.
But at the last possible moment, Matsushita Yusuke pulled back about a third of the force.
Soifon registered the change. She used the reduced impact to work a half-twist free, got her right hand out, and kept moving backward until she'd put more than ten meters between them.
Both of them were breathing hard.
One from being on the receiving end of a scare.
One from pure physical effort.
Soifon straightened up slowly, watching him with cautious eyes.
"You. Why did you stop?"
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