Chapter 138: Good Work
Kuna Mashiro.
Green hair, young face, a girl who normally radiated more energy than she had any right to. Also Kensei's vice-captain, at least in name.
Nobody here was unfamiliar with her.
But.
Was this Kuna Mashiro?
Everyone closing in around her had more or less the same thought.
"This is... who?"
She was wearing her shihakusho, and Mashiro's characteristic scarf was still around her neck. Appearance and build matched every remembered detail. But the reiatsu rolling off her, heavy and clinging and dark to the point of being extinguished, was nothing a Shinigami should be producing. The shape of it was wrong.
And there was something else.
The strange mask covering her face was its own source of unease.
Milky white. It seemed to have grown directly against the skin, spreading and adhering, until it had swallowed Mashiro's face entirely.
Yadōmaru Lisa moved forward without hesitation.
Behind her, Aikawa Love had just touched down, and couldn't help calling out.
"Hold on. The situation isn't clear yet. Don't just go in."
"It's fine. I've got this."
Lisa kept moving, both hands working as she went. Reiatsu gathered and pulsed at her palms, forming two surging bands of light that sank into the earth, rippled outward through the ground, and rose one after another to cover the shape of 'Mashiro.'
Bakudo #30 Shitotsu Sansen.
The reishi particles locked and reinforced, achieving restraint quickly enough.
Once the binding held, Lisa moved in without pause and began a more careful examination.
"This..."
She made contact with the mask. Her expression changed.
"Something's... not right here?"
She didn't sound certain. Clearly Lisa's first encounter with anything like this.
"What is it?"
Hirako Shinji moved in beside her, eyes on 'Mashiro,' who was restrained but still struggling steadily against it. He added a second Bakudo for good measure.
"Anything useful?"
"This..."
Lisa's finger went to the milky-white surface.
"It has warmth. I can feel reiatsu moving through it. If I had to guess, this is where that dark feeling is coming from."
Then.
A quick, decisive grip on the collar of the shihakusho. A tearing motion.
SNAP.
The fabric split open in one sharp pull.
What would normally have been an uncomfortable moment had nothing of the kind about it. There was nothing here anyone wanted to see.
Because visible to the naked eye, the milky-white material was spreading, its pale edges flowing downward from the face, sliding along the neck, blanketing the entire upper body.
And under everyone's eyes, it was still moving. Creeping. Something organic, something that didn't belong in the world of the living or the dead, something that triggered a deep instinctive revulsion in everyone who looked at it.
"What IS that?!"
Sarugaki Hiyori couldn't hold it in.
Something this far outside what she could understand was not something she was equipped to accept.
"I don't know either, so keep it down."
Hirako stepped in front of her and pulled her behind him in a single motion.
"If things go bad, fall back. Find an opening and send a signal flare. Stay connected to Seireitei at all costs. Understood?"
She'd started to take it as being underestimated. Then she heard it was an actual assignment.
A brief, stuck silence. Then Hiyori gave a hard nod.
"Got it."
Matsushita Yusuke, meanwhile, had his eyes fixed on the group clustered around the target.
"Somebody help. Let's try to get this thing off."
"Isn't that reckless? Shouldn't we contact Seireitei first?"
"There's no time! Look at her chest. The rise and fall is slowing down. She could be in real danger."
What else would you expect from someone trained under Kyoraku Shunsui. That level of professional focus in a situation like this was well beyond the standard.
Everyone moved in.
After a combined effort that took real work, a clean crack rang out and the milky-white mask shattered and broke apart.
Mashiro's real face came back into view. Everyone stared.
It really was her.
"Her reiatsu feels normal again..."
"What happened? The white marks are pulling back."
"Wait, it's going into her body! What is going on?!"
Otoribashi Rojuro, who had been the one engaging her before the others arrived, stood with a hard expression, lightly running a hand through his hair, speaking as though the ground itself might give way.
"When I was fighting her before... it felt nothing like Mashiro."
Appearance. Reiatsu. Movement habits and combat patterns. All of it should have served as reference. But every piece of evidence pointed toward something no existing framework could account for, and nobody was sure what to make of any of it.
What was she, right now?
Before anyone could settle on an answer.
Hirako's voice cut through without warning.
"Look out!!!"
A dark figure burst from the tree line and came down onto the group from directly above.
BOOM!!
The ground split. Trees collapsed.
Standing in the cracks, a figure raised its head and let out a long, raw, ragged roar.
"AAAAAAAAA!!!"
Captain's haori in shreds. A milky-white mask clinging to the skull. The roaring figure connected everyone present, immediately and without question, to one missing person.
Muguruma Kensei.
"He got hit too?"
A golden chain weapon lashed out and coiled around Kensei, binding him in place.
Otoribashi Rojuro called out: "Hold him down!"
Aikawa Love came down from above, an enormous club driving into Kensei's skull and hammering him into the ground.
"Got him pinned. Reinforce it, now!"
If the goal had been killing, none of this combined effort would have been necessary. But suppression without lethal force was its own kind of problem, and the work required scaled up considerably.
"I'm on it!"
Everyone piled in.
Compared to Mashiro, getting Kensei under control was a different class of difficulty.
They went back and forth for a while.
Finally, with a sharp crack, Kensei's face came back, and his body hit the ground hard.
Everyone was breathing heavily, looking at each other. The confusion had nowhere to go and simply spread outward through the group like fog.
What... had just happened here?
Pak. Pak. Pak.
Unhurried applause, from somewhere behind them.
"Everyone. You've worked hard. As combat reference data for the Visored's power parameters, these two battle records... are truly valuable material."
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