Chapter 116: Close Combat
Aizen Sosuke let out a quiet, involuntary laugh.
"I wouldn't resort to something like that to cheat."
Being members of what Yusuke privately thought of as their high-and-mighty little club, their abilities were more or less public knowledge among the group. Even so, Aizen had never disclosed how to break Kyoka Suigetsu.
Just don't let anyone touch the handle. That's literally all it takes. How stingy.
Then again, it spoke to Aizen's caution, and Matsushita Yusuke had no real complaint about that.
"Without Kyoka Suigetsu?"
Aizen's expression went serious immediately.
That actually threw Matsushita Yusuke slightly. Come on. Do you really have to think that hard about it? Is Unohana Retsu really that dangerous an opponent for you?
"To be candid: among everyone currently in Soul Society, there are a handful of people I'm genuinely wary of. People I'd prefer not to fight. Squad 4's captain is one of them."
The man himself saying so was confirmation enough.
Aizen interlaced his fingers in front of him, gaze drifting upward, a brief look of consideration crossing his face.
"Unlike most Shinigami, Unohana Retsu is much like Yamamoto. She belongs to a type that was shaped by long and continuous battle."
And opponents of that type...
"Have exceptionally strong instincts."
He said it plainly, without particular emphasis. Aizen's gaze dropped back down, expression settling into something measured.
Then he continued, slowly.
"Someone like that is acutely sensitive to killing intent and the subtle shifts in the air around a fight. A simple misdirection might work. Something light, something that doesn't push too far."
But.
"If you try to go further while keeping up the deception, try to do something more aggressive under its cover, there's a very real chance of giving yourself away entirely."
That sounded almost impossible to believe.
In canon, Kyoka Suigetsu had been essentially without flaw. Aizen had played the entire cast at will, delivering monologue after monologue of composed villainy, and left behind one of the most fully realized antagonist portraits in anime history.
Ahem. Getting off track.
"Is it really that serious?"
"Try it yourself tonight. You'll understand."
Aizen's expression was the smile of someone who had the answer and wasn't going to give it away. The pressure it put on Matsushita Yusuke was considerable.
Yusuke turned it over, and came to the same conclusion fairly quickly. The reasoning wasn't hard to find.
There was actually a quiet hint of it in canon. The false death body Aizen had constructed with Kyoka Suigetsu, the one that had passed a death examination and been placed in custody ahead of burial rites, had still managed to trigger a faint unease in Unohana Retsu.
It was entirely possible that came down to technical imperfection on Aizen's part, or simply to Unohana's exceptional diagnostic ability.
But writing off the factor of her instincts wasn't something that could be done cleanly either.
"The stronger someone like that gets, the more battles they accumulate, the more sensitive they become to anything out of the ordinary. That's why, in my assessment, Captain Unohana is the most difficult person in Soul Society to deal with after the Captain-Commander."
High praise. Also genuinely alarming.
Matsushita Yusuke broke out in a cold sweat.
If you're nervous, what does that make me? Do I actually have a shot here?
"What's your honest read on me, Aizen-sensei?"
"You?"
Aizen tilted his head slightly. A moment of thought, then he raised his right hand, opened his palm, and held up three fingers.
Three?
"I can hold her off for three minutes?"
Aizen shook his head in silence.
"She'd put you down in three seconds."
What the hell!
Is the gap actually that wide?!
"Of course, based on my read of you during the Kijishi fight, and given that some time has passed since then, you should have grown at least somewhat."
Right. So that meant... actually, that was still confusing.
Did that mean Kijishi would also have been one-shotted by Unohana?
"..."
Matsushita Yusuke scratched the back of his head with a thoroughly puzzled expression.
It sounded absurd. But it also kind of held up.
He was still running through it when Aizen, on his side of the exchange, finished turning over what had been said and spoke in a completely even tone.
"In any case, if you're going up against Unohana Retsu: don't lean on Kido."
Yusuke came back to the moment and followed up naturally.
"Why not?"
"Because she won't give you the space to use it."
On that subject.
"Matsushita-kun, are you familiar with the Quincy? Roughly a thousand years ago, they and Soul Society fought a prolonged war."
Oh, I know about that. I watched the whole second arc.
"I picked up some of the background talking with Captain Kyoraku. I have a general picture."
"Is that so. Then I can skip some of the setup." A brief pause. "In my view, Shinigami are significantly inferior to the Quincy when it comes to utilizing reishi. Not just in terms of raw output, but in the forms it takes and the specific applications it enables."
Matsushita Yusuke had no argument against this, and couldn't find one even if he'd tried.
"The fact that Captain Unohana survived that conflict means she has built up considerable combat experience against opponents of that caliber."
True enough.
"Your chant-free technique is genuinely unusual, but in front of her, I think it would amount to pulling a card trick in front of a grandmaster. Captain Unohana almost certainly has countermeasures prepared for that kind of approach. You'd be better off going in with that assumption already in place."
Matsushita Yusuke nodded slowly, working through the implications.
"Following that logic, if you want any real shot at beating Captain Unohana, the only real path would be..."
He hadn't finished when Aizen gave a slight nod and said it quietly.
"Close combat."
Strip everything away. No Kido, no setup, no angles. Pure martial skill and technique, the most direct exchange possible.
The answer made Matsushita Yusuke shudder.
Isn't that going straight back into her comfort zone? Is this actually advice, or are you setting me up?
"That's roughly what I wanted to say. Though, now that I think about it: why are you suddenly asking all this? Do you have some kind of conflict with Captain Unohana?"
"Not exactly. But Aizen-sensei, you know what the title Kenpachi means, right?"
"Oh, that? Now that you mention it, there is something to that."
The Kenpachi succession was not common knowledge. Even among the captains, only a handful knew the full story behind it.
Clearly, Aizen was not among them.
Then again, he had Kyoka Suigetsu. Any archive in Soul Society was open to him whenever he wanted, every record accessible with no more effort than deciding to look.