Chapter 227: My Dual-Blade Style
I can handle them alone.
In a certain sense, the sheer weight of that declaration was on par with the "We will win" from the Shinjuku battle next door.
Because it felt a bit too dramatic, everyone who heard it reacted in their own way.
Kyoraku looked up. Unohana's grip tightened on her hilt. Ukitake coughed sharply. Sasakibe's expression settled into something darker.
Maybe it was bravado. But that didn't change what this side needed to do. Even a lion brings its full force against a rabbit, let alone when you were hunting actual criminals. Maximum caution was the only correct call.
There was no point wasting words.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni was, in the most literal sense, a man of action.
Today was supposed to be flower viewing and good sake. And now this had arrived to ruin it. Yet Yamamoto didn't feel any particular deflation about that.
Quite the opposite, actually.
The old man's heart, which had been perfectly settled a moment ago, was now stirring, rising steadily toward something.
"Cutting down villains like you today, for me and for the Soul Society both, will be a great blessing."
The words hadn't finished leaving his mouth.
Whoosh.
The figure vanished, trailing points of light. A blazing blade swinging with the force of a thousand-pound drop, aimed straight at Matsushita Yusuke's face.
A wide, open attack with no restraint whatsoever.
And Yusuke didn't dodge. Or more precisely: there was no time to.
He only managed to pull his sword up in time to block. The two blades met in the air, clashing hard, sending brilliant burning sparks flying as two surges of reiatsu tore into each other and formed a current that made every bystander stagger.
Kyoraku Shunsui, who had been about to slip in for a quick hit the moment Yamamoto started his charge, was blown off his feet by the shockwave and forced to stay where he was.
He bared his teeth, raised an arm to shield his face, and squinted up at what was happening. His eyes showed genuine surprise.
Is this real?
"This guy... he's holding even with Old Man Yama right now?"
He was.
Matsushita Yusuke, facing Yamamoto's attack head-on, showed no sign of losing ground.
Though part of that was down to Yusuke's own visible progress, the bigger factor was something else. This still had the feel of Yamamoto not fully committing. Not yet.
The old man's words had been fierce. In practice, he was still holding things back.
He's probing. Wants to see how I've changed before deciding how to adjust.
A ferocious-looking assault that was, at its core, more contact than commitment. Yamamoto's fighting style was enormously adaptable and what he was showing right now was barely the tip of the iceberg.
What a pain.
Reflecting on it in the same instant, Matsushita Yusuke stepped back half a step, giving ground while pressing his blade suddenly downward.
"...!"
The abrupt change in direction seemed to catch Yamamoto off guard.
"Nothing to be surprised about, is there? If you're probing, I need to give you something real to look at."
Yamamoto stumbled forward, off-balance. Yusuke stepped in to meet him. In the moment their bodies crossed paths, both swords slammed together one more time.
BANG!!!
A deafening crack. Yamamoto's foot slid, his shoulder cloth tore, and bright blood seeped through.
"Old Man Yama?!"
Kyoraku's reaction was like watching the sky fall. Because Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni's image as an absolute force had never, in living memory, cracked. From as far back as anyone could remember, the old man had simply never lost.
And now he was bleeding.
Did that mean the opponent in front of them was something beyond the ordinary?
"I'm fine."
A steady reply. Yamamoto exhaled and steadied himself.
A shallow cut. Not remotely enough to affect his movement.
And for the battle itself, it actually had the opposite effect.
"Your progress is considerable."
The hand gripping the hilt tightened slightly, and Yamamoto's tone carried something unmistakably like genuine approval.
"Compared to last time, your progress is... not small at all."
"Oh, thank you for the compliment."
Brief eye contact between the two of them.
Then, wordlessly and with complete mutual understanding, both moved to the next level.
Matsushita Yusuke turned slightly sideways, his right hand dropping, hovering just above his Zanpakuto's hilt.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni removed his outer robe, revealing a lean, scar-covered upper body.
The reiatsu of both fighters surged toward each other, like two enormous machines moving to collide head-on. The fragments of spiritual power that flew off formed currents that rushed outward in every direction.
Though neither side said a word, both acted in concert: people on each side moved to manage the collateral, to confine the battle's shockwave and keep it from spreading too far.
Keeping the damage contained. A goal both sides shared.
But that was the visible work. Kyoraku Shunsui, gripping the hilt of his own sword, was studying the enemy's movements with careful attention.
Their shadows.
"They may already have intelligence on my ability, which cuts down on the chance of a first-strike kill. But this positioning itself is strange... are they drawing me to move first?"
Kyoraku's ability needed setup to deploy properly. He could act directly, certainly. But the results wouldn't be ideal.
This in-between state was the most difficult kind to be stuck in.
"Kyoraku..."
Ukitake Jushiro's voice came from beside him. He coughed and stepped forward, his released Zanpakuto held level in both hands.
Sogyo no Kotowari.
As one of the rare dual-blade users in Soul Society, Ukitake's ability was built for redirecting force and long-range disruption. Against a stalemate that nobody could break, he chose to step up and try to change things.
"I'll make the first move. The rest of you, use the opening. Don't let it go to waste."
Whether an ability gets exposed or not, once you've decided to act there's no room for hesitation.
On the other side, Aizen Sosuke spoke quietly, feeling the reiatsu movements beginning to concentrate toward individual targets.
"Get ready. Don't fall behind."
"Yes..."
Tosen answered, though the pressure he was carrying was considerable.
Both sides entered the next gear simultaneously.
"Bankai!"
Matsushita Yusuke's reiatsu burst. He raised his Zanpakuto high. The light pulsing around it spiraled and blazed, settling into a brilliant, crystalline radiance.
Yamamoto's eyes narrowed slightly. In an instant, he identified it.
That ability. The one he had seen before.
"Juni Innen Metsu!"
A sound like glass shattering, spreading outward.
And in an instant, everything that had been visible in the surrounding space cracked apart in absolute silence, shattered, then pieced itself back together and returned to normal.
"..."
Yamamoto observed the surroundings without speaking. He had been through this once already, so his composure held.
Nothing to it. Just going through something familiar again. More than that, the old man found himself experiencing something close to contemptuous amusement.
Because at this point, the conclusion was obvious.
"Do you think that cheap trick will work on me a second time?"
Using nothing more than the lingering power of the dead to attack the weaknesses in living people's hearts.
Against Yamamoto, that approach held...
"Not a shred of meaning."
But the moment those words left his mouth, Yamamoto realized something was off.
The surroundings hadn't changed at all. But where Kyoraku Shunsui and the others had been standing, just moments before, they had vanished entirely without a trace.
Yamamoto's battle instincts fired instantly.
"Your target isn't me?"
That's right.
"Having that many spectators must make things inconvenient, I'd imagine. I already said I'd handle all of you by myself."
Matsushita Yusuke raised his right hand. Directly above his head, a massive sphere was forming without a sound.
A barrier. Or perhaps that word fit better than domain for this particular piece of it.
As a use of the Rule-type Zanpakuto, the level of skill Yusuke was demonstrating now was substantially higher than anything he had shown before.
What had previously been a vague shape with unclear edges was now something else: Yusuke could cleanly draw the boundary between reality and the domain using nothing but his own reiatsu.
There were advantages to this. He could take the domain's previously fragile walls, which were liable to crack under real force, and reinforce them into something genuinely solid. Something more like an actual barrier.
But that reinforcement had limits. If Yamamoto truly committed to a full-power slash, it would still cut through like a watermelon.
The disadvantage, on the other hand, was simpler: it was completely obvious.
The barrier Matsushita Yusuke had constructed had already reached an absurd scale. Close to five kilometers across. Big enough to block out the sky.
What was the point of doing that? Building something this enormous and this conspicuous was essentially just standing in the open as a stationary target.
"Foolish."
Yamamoto delivered his assessment directly.
"You didn't choose to confine me. You captured those captains instead. You intend to deal with us in two separate batches and sweep us all in?"
From a strategic standpoint, the logic was sound. But.
"You underestimate me!"
BANG!!!
His reiatsu detonated. Ryujin Jakka, already in its released state, flew from its sheath and drove straight upward into the sky in a single massive stroke. Overwhelming force, no subtlety required, nothing hidden. Just the attack itself, and the weight of it was already enough to make the air buckle.
As for how to stop it, that wasn't the old man's concern.
With your Zanpakuto reiatsu committed to that barrier, what exactly is left to block this?
The opening was right there. No reason not to take it.
The logic was sound.
However.
"I can't predict this one by normal logic."
Matsushita Yusuke's figure appeared in front of the incoming strike without a sound. He made a grabbing motion, then drove his arm downward.
Reiatsu coalesced into a solid mass and hammered into the blazing blade-light coming at him. The two forces ground against each other, then shattered apart.
"...!"
Yamamoto's expression shifted involuntarily. His depth of experience was such that very little produced a genuine surprise response. But what had just happened had, in fact, affected his judgment.
"You..."
A pause. A moment of silence.
"You released two Zanpakuto at the same time. You have power of different types?"
Matsushita Yusuke shook out his right hand. The near-broken light still clinging to it burst and scattered into drifting fragments.
"Who knows. Try and find out for yourself."
[Technique (Dual-Blade Style)]
[Through your continuous deepening study and refinement of your Zanpakuto, you have mastered a more essential, more advanced expression of power. You are now capable of simultaneously releasing two Zanpakuto, with each performing at approximately 90% of its individual capacity.]
The years of accumulation hadn't only shown up on Yusuke's panels.
In fact, the most important gains had always been in technique.
Techniques of all kinds and varieties, and when layered together they produced stacking bonuses across multiple areas at once.
Like right now.
Releasing two Zanpakuto simultaneously at 90% of each was a real limitation. But as long as his baseline average was high enough, covering that ten percent shortfall was no problem at all.
Matsushita Yusuke raised his right hand and traced it lightly through the air beside him.
The reiatsu flowing around him stirred, slightly distorted, and then silently assembled into form.
Weapons of every different shape and style materialized around him, forming a ring of sentinels with Matsushita Yusuke at the center.
In this moment, the silhouette he projected was enormous. Even larger than Yamamoto's.
"Old man."
Matsushita Yusuke said it with an easy smile.
"Are you stocked up on weapons? Because here I come."
The fight was escalating.
And inside the barrier, on the other side of that boundary...
The four people now trapped within it were thoroughly sweating.
From earlier intelligence sharing, Kyoraku Shunsui and the others had a rough sense of what this ability did and what it was for.
It extracted targets from memory and manifested them as real constructs. So who was the target this time? What was going to appear?
Kyoraku started organizing by instinct.
"Everyone stay close. We move together, and-"
He stopped.
Because at visible distance, not far ahead, a figure was materializing.
"It's coming!"
Sasakibe Chojiro, who had direct personal experience from the first ambush, was already at maximum alert. His expression was severe, as though sheer force of urgency could help the other three stay sharp.
But he quickly realized that particular effort wasn't necessary.
Because the figure being drawn out was one he knew without any doubt.
Ukitake Jushiro swallowed hard, both hands closing tighter around his Zanpakuto.
"Is this... real?"
Unohana Retsu's gaze dropped. Her voice, when it came, had an edge.
"Who knows."
As established: Yusuke couldn't precisely specify a target for extraction. But through something close to exploiting a loophole, he could get around that limitation. By designating every person within the domain as the target pool and extracting from the collective, what appeared would be the figure most deeply burned into all of them combined. The one no one in that group could ever forget.
The figure walking through fire, approaching without hurry from the distance ahead...
Was the Yamamoto from a thousand years ago. Before age had settled into his face. Features fierce as a demon's.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni: Thousand-Year Blood War Pro Max edition, making his entrance.