Chapter 122: Battle Tactics
"Yeah! Got it! I won!"
Matsushita Yusuke let out a cheer and bolted upright.
Face full of excitement, both arms raised over his head, making a sound that was somewhere between triumph and relief.
Yes!
But fairly quickly, Matsushita Yusuke realized something was off.
Where did the mad old woman go?!
Why were Soifon and Kishinoshin sitting nearby doing paperwork? How did he end up on the floor?
Uh.
Why did his face hurt this much?
"Hey. You awake?"
Soifon's voice came from beside him. Matsushita Yusuke looked up in confusion and met her thoroughly unimpressed stare.
"Well? Is your head working?"
"...Yeah, seems like... not quite... no, no, I'm awake, I'm awake!"
One look at the size of Soifon's fist and awake stopped being optional.
"Before anything else. Do you actually remember what happened?"
At that, Matsushita Yusuke went quiet for a moment, lifting a hand to press against his forehead.
Ugh.
He really wanted to say he had absolutely no idea. Soifon's iron fist made the alternative more appealing. Think. Use the brain. What happened?
He pieced it together.
He had broken Unohana's Zanpakuto. Taken the upper hand.
The mad old woman had actually seemed stunned for a moment. Wide open.
He had announced his victory. Declared himself the winner of the exchange.
And then, then...
"She slapped me?"
He'd been too excited. The declaration itself was the opening. Chest completely exposed, nothing resembling a defensive posture.
He hadn't had any ability to react. He caught the slap clean, went airborne, and hit the ground.
Lesson learned: losing your Zanpakuto did reduce combat power dramatically.
What it did not mean was that the person became helpless. If anything, the opposite.
The mad old woman's unarmed game was nothing to take lightly.
Next time there was an opportunity, he was not going to be that sloppy.
Though honestly, the main issue was wanting the win too badly. The reward in front of him had made him reckless. Thinking about it clearly: the overall odds hadn't been great to begin with.
After the third reishi blade, Yusuke had basically had nothing left. And Unohana? She could send him across the ground with a bare-handed slap.
Total loss.
But not nothing.
At minimum she had left him with a positive assessment.
These memories surfaced one by one, and his expression ran through several phases.
Mild disappointment: the victory reward was gone. Mild satisfaction: Biological +10 was still better than nothing.
You work with what you get.
"...What exactly are you talking about to yourself?"
Soifon crouched down and pressed a hand briefly to his forehead.
No temperature. So why was he talking nonsense?
"You were found collapsed by the roadside. Someone said you'd had too much to drink and had you sent back. Who were you with? That much? Do you have any idea what a captain is supposed to look like?"
Was that really how it had been explained?
Matsushita Yusuke pulled at his collar and caught a clear and unmistakable smell of alcohol. He had absolutely no memory of drinking.
So someone had specifically come out, handled the aftermath, dressed up the cover story, and sent him home. Thorough service, whatever else you might say about it. He more or less understood what had happened.
The fight with Unohana had been watched by more than a few people.
Why is everyone sneaking around like rats in the walls? Can't this just be put on the table and discussed openly?
He complained internally, and then mostly felt resigned. This was probably Unohana's preference. Her personality was nothing if not distinctive. Whatever decision she made about handling it wasn't surprising.
As for himself.
Matsushita Yusuke dropped his gaze to his right hand, opened it, closed it.
What exactly had he actually gained from this fight?
Control the scale of each weapon.
Going all-out had not produced a miracle. It had taken two reishi blades just to break Unohana's Zanpakuto.
Rather than focusing on completely destroying the opponent's weapon, the better approach is harassment and disruption. That would produce more consistent results.
After all, this ability was already genuinely unusual.
A Zanpakuto was a sharp, practical, multi-function weapon, and most Shinigami depended on theirs to a degree that was hard to overstate. Disrupting that, even partially, would throw even veteran fighters considerably off their footing.
Unohana's expression the moment she felt the distortion still turned over in his memory.
Strategic direction. That was the real gain from this fight.
Going forward in high-stakes combat, he couldn't go all-out every time. Adjusting the scale of the reishi weapons, using them with more precision and less waste: that was the goal to pursue.
Kongokai's nature dictated it would only see real use in specific situations. Narrowing the attack scope, yes. But once those conditions were met, the destructive force at that moment would be at its absolute peak.
Unohana's acknowledgment confirmed the direction.
As for the rest.
Think it through slowly. Improve piece by piece.
For the current Matsushita Yusuke, there was still plenty of time.
"Hey. Are you listening to me?"
"Hm? Ah. Yes! Of course!"
"Then repeat back what I just said. You can summarize. Ten words or less."
"...Uh. That's, um..."
"When someone is talking to you, you listen. You absolute disaster."
"Ow..."
In summary, the incident was temporarily closed.
After a brief recovery and some private planning for what came next, a familiar figure slipped into Squad 2 territory without any announcement.
Tosen Kaname scaled the wall and crept into Matsushita Yusuke's room with the energy of someone who knew they were somewhere they weren't supposed to be.
"Matsushita-kun. I apologize for the intrusion. But Aizen-sama has a message."
A short pause, and then the blind man added:
"After all these years, we are moving again."