Chapter 225: Spirit Totem
After finishing his briefing with Yamamoto, Matsushita Yusuke stood at the gates of Squad 1, looking up at the sign overhead in a mild daze.
"What's the matter, Captain Matsushita?"
A Squad 1 member spotted him and stepped forward with genuine concern, ready to help with whatever was needed.
Yusuke laughed it off and waved them away.
"Nothing... just something that occurred to me out of nowhere. Sorry about that."
Given the practical limits of the ability and the risk of exposure, Aizen's Kyoka Suigetsu did not cover the entire Seireitei. Certain zones were deliberately excluded. Squad 1 was among them.
As for what had triggered the brief vacancy.
Something along the lines of: "the young man I have high expectations for is currently planning to take me out."
Matsushita Yusuke raised a hand and scratched the side of his face, expression carrying several things at once, quietly reflecting.
"Didn't think someone like me would end up with expectations placed on them. Soul Society really is running thin on the next generation, isn't it."
If you thought about it carefully, the decision to put Kyoraku Shunsui in the Captain-Commander seat after Yamamoto's death in the original story had a fair amount of resignation baked into it.
In the same generation: Unohana Yachiru was a veteran PvP fighter with essentially zero political sense. Yamamoto's two proudest students: one spent his life goofing around, the other was perpetually collapsing sick. The remaining candidates were either too weak to carry the role or too short on standing to make it stick.
When you picked through the options one by one, Kyoraku Shunsui was more or less what was left.
Sitting with that, it was genuinely poignant.
"Right. I'll head off, then."
Matsushita Yusuke said nothing more and turned to leave.
He let his arms hang loose at his sides, tilted his head back toward the sky, and after a moment of quiet thought let out a slow breath.
Nice weather today.
And also.
Time was running short.
Five days slipped past in the blink of an eye.
On this particular day, a somewhat private gathering was held in the Seireitei, as it was every year.
A small number of people, led by Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni himself, had made their preparations quietly and without alerting their own squads, slipping away to meet somewhere in the western Rukongai.
"Sorry, sorry! Am I late?"
Kyoraku Shunsui came jogging up with an apologetic grin already in place. Ukitake Jushiro let out a quiet cough and gave him a look of profound resignation.
"Will I ever live to see the day you aren't late?"
"Come on, don't be so harsh... we're going to be around for several thousand years, aren't we? Bad habits get corrected gradually."
A short distance away, Unohana Retsu was going through the drinks and food they had brought, one hand free and rubbing her chin in quiet thought.
Sasakibe Chojiro was doing much the same nearby, though his inventory process was clearly the more thorough and methodical of the two.
"Captain Unohana, I understand that a picnic calls for drinks and snacks, but... why exactly did we also have to bring matcha?"
"Grinding tea beneath the cherry blossoms. Isn't that a wonderfully pleasant thing to do?"
"...I don't quite follow, but I respect your decision."
The cheerful noise of the scene, viewed through the eyes of a simply-dressed Yamamoto, carried its own particular quality.
It had been a long time.
Since the blood war a thousand years ago, Yamamoto had lost a great many old friends and powerful allies. Much of what had once surrounded him was simply gone.
Because of that, he had come to hold the quiet and the peace of the present especially dear. Every year, on this day, he gathered these old friends and students, found somewhere to go together, looked at flowers, drank good sake.
Nothing serious. Nothing that needed announcing. Simply something everyone looked forward to when the day came around.
The old man stroked his long beard, happily watching these familiar figures, and could not stop nodding quietly to himself.
By contrast, Sasakibe Chojiro, having finished his inventory, felt something that lived closer to unease quietly building beneath the surface.
The reason was simple enough.
His thoughts had drifted, quite naturally, back to everything that happened last time.
Those enemies who had been so long silent: was this the kind of rare, unguarded opportunity they might choose to exploit? Would they make another attempt on the Captain-Commander?
The thought surfaced, held for a moment, and was then pushed under by what followed. Probably not. There was no logical reason for it now.
Several decades had passed, after all.
Even the most vivid memory gathered dust over time, settling into something faint and blurred.
In the years immediately after the first incident, every detail of Yamamoto's movements had been kept under strict secrecy and sealed away like classified material.
Yamamoto himself had not been enthusiastic about any of that. But under Sasakibe's persistent insistence, he had ultimately complied.
Being on high alert was only reasonable. Even the Captain-Commander sustaining a mere injury was something the Gotei 13 could not afford to accept.
A spiritual pillar. A physical symbol, something close to a living totem of the Seireitei itself.
Perhaps both, in the end.
Because pointing at any part of the original story was sufficient to make the case.
In the Thousand-Year Blood War arc, the Gotei 13 was ambushed and took devastating losses. Every captain was in a terrible state. Casualties were appearing in the most literal sense of the word.
And yet.
Every morale problem dissolved like smoke the moment the Captain-Commander began to move.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni stepped forward. His blazing Zanpakuto cut his enemies down.
The instant every Gotei 13 member registered this fact, something in all of them visibly ignited.
The clearest case was over in Squad 7: the big dog who had been getting beaten into the ground by his own Bankai turned against him, barely able to lift his head, suddenly snapping back and fighting like he had been injected with adrenaline. Even Bambietta was caught off guard.
In any case.
Yamamoto was, in the most literal sense, the combat ceiling of Soul Society. Its singular representative.
But from another angle entirely, he was also something else: an absolute symbol that simply could not fall.
Standing there. Being whole. Maintaining command.
That alone was enough to keep the Gotei 13 fighting.
There was no one who could fill that role in his place. Not even Kyoraku Shunsui as the next Captain-Commander.
From that angle, Sasakibe's reaction was entirely understandable.
But, on reflection.
"After going this long without making a move, they have almost certainly concluded that facing the Captain-Commander directly is not viable. By now they have very likely shifted to other methods entirely."
The thought had barely taken shape when it was swept aside.
Sasakibe Chojiro's expression changed in an instant.
He snapped his head upward and looked.
Three silent figures stood motionless in the sky directly above them.