Chapter 277: This Is Way Too Feudal
Kuchiki Byakuya had spoken.
And pulled every set of eyes in the vicinity toward him in the process.
Since taking over the Kuchiki household, he had, until this point, maintained a notably low profile -- at least compared to his predecessor. Kuchiki Ginrei had been the definition of dedicated service, and even now, having passed the position to the next generation, many of the captains still held him in considerable regard. Against that standard, Byakuya had been measured and unremarkable. No sweeping changes, no eccentric behavior -- just a careful steward of the Kuchiki family's dignity, holding himself to strict standards.
That was the initial impression.
In practice, after a series of developments over the years, the other captains' read on him had shifted considerably.
Because some years back, this future head of the Kuchiki household had not only declined an arranged marriage, he had gone ahead and married a commoner from the Rukongai.
The pursuit of personal happiness wasn't something anyone had a legitimate complaint about.
Even someone as tradition-minded as Yamamoto would not criticize a choice like that.
But the person making such a thoroughly irregular decision was the future head of the Kuchiki family -- and merely thinking about it had produced no small amount of murmuring and shaking of heads among those who paid attention to such things.
Like the Shiba family in its former glory: a clan head acting in a way that defied expectation. In the eyes of certain people, this kind of thing could be read as the beginning of a decline.
Whether that prediction held or not remained to be seen.
"Captain-Commander."
Byakuya turned his head.
He didn't spell out his intention, but the expression asking for permission was clear enough to communicate it without words.
He wanted to go down.
In principle, the tournament had no formal regulations about who could enter -- outside of prohibitions on group attacks, there were no written rules. But an informal consensus had developed around one particular point.
Captain-level figures didn't descend.
Nobody could say exactly when this had started, or who had first suggested it. But it had become understood. Every participant so far had been at vice-captain or seated officer level. A captain stepping in would not only seem like poor form, it would produce a win that meant nothing -- beating the field as the strongest person present wasn't an achievement that carried any weight.
And yet Kuchiki Byakuya was actively moving to break that consensus.
What exactly was his intention?
A range of expressions appeared across the watching faces -- some calculating, some studying, some skeptical, some simply thinking.
The logic of noble behavior tended to have traceable patterns. Viewed from that angle, Byakuya's decision must surely carry some specific political or strategic implication.
Almost everyone attempted to find an exploitable angle in it.
Only a few understood, and caught on quickly.
This particular head of the Kuchiki household genuinely did not have that level of hidden calculation behind this.
He was exactly what he had said he was. He simply wanted to go down there and correct someone who had been causing problems.
Not far away, Kyoraku Shunsui turned his head sideways and produced an expression that landed somewhere between exasperation and involuntary amusement.
This is going to get complicated. The young ones really can't sit still.
Going down there meant no good outcome regardless of the result.
The vice-captain sitting beside him, Ise Nanao, leaned over cautiously and said in a quiet voice:
"Are you alright, Captain? Is something bothering you?"
"Nothing's wrong. I just think things are about to get annoying."
He had only come to watch something like a particularly entertaining fight, and now it seemed the program had expanded in an unexpected direction.
Not a wasted trip, all things considered.
Although, now that he thought about it -- Kyoraku rubbed his chin, eyes drifting toward the arena below -- there was something worth noting about Squad 6's vice-captain as well. Squad 6 had historically been a stronghold for noble families, captains and vice-captains alike. Going back to the previous generation, Ginrei had kept his son-in-law nearby as a deliberate mentorship arrangement. The vice-captain position in Squad 6 carried a certain political dimension on top of the usual administrative role.
A bit complicated. But not surprising for a noble household. That was simply how these things worked.
Sitting with that thought, Kyoraku looked back down at the arena and found his expression becoming more interesting.
Outwardly one of the most conservative noble figures in the organization.
And yet the actual record: marrying someone with no pedigree, appointing a non-noble as his second-in-command, and now personally descending to confront someone who had been hitting his vice-captain for years.
Stripping it all out and putting it side by side, Kyoraku thought he might have underestimated this particular captain.
Maybe Byakuya was just someone burning with something genuine under a very traditional exterior.
The gossip instinct was just beginning to catch fire when Yamamoto spoke.
"You want to go down, Captain Kuchiki?"
Byakuya didn't answer directly. He responded with a question.
That might have sounded strange in isolation, but in practical terms it was its own kind of statement. A final position before action.
Standing where he was, Yamamoto's view was clear: this was not the right move. But refusing publicly would not follow normal social logic either. So he had chosen to repeat the question and emphasize it, giving Byakuya the opportunity to reconsider on his own.
Would the man catch it?
Byakuya's expression did not change. He maintained the same composed, unreadable look and had already prepared himself to speak again.
He genuinely was not catching it.
Byakuya's training and the values he had absorbed had shaped him into someone who understood noble obligations and observed them sincerely. But as had already been noted, all of that was learned behavior -- the product of external influence and deliberate education. Underneath those layers of social expectation and aristocratic principle, Kuchiki Byakuya was quite possibly someone who didn't take instruction well and preferred to do things his own way.
If you were going to marry someone, make sure she came from nothing. If you were going to pick a deputy, make sure she was someone your sister actually liked.
Whether that kind of person was capable of changing anything -- that remained an open question. The original story had Ichigo arriving with no agenda beyond getting Rukia out, and this particular man had still jumped in front of him and pushed until they were both beaten up about it. He got knocked off his feet once when Ichigo released his Bankai, looked briefly like he might lose, and went off script again.
All of it accompanied by declarations about dignity and trampling pride, which -- from the perspective of a feudal aristocrat -- probably constituted standard trash talk during a grudge match.
The problem being that the person on the receiving end was a modern high school student with no frame of reference for any of it, who could only respond by shouting back that he didn't understand a word of it and then charging forward anyway.
Ichigo had his own character issues, to be fair. Given his age and experience, there were limits to what he could be expected to manage.
By comparison, Kuchiki Byakuya and figures like him were, to put it plainly, open to debate.
No wonder Ichigo hadn't wanted much further contact with Soul Society after the Rukia arc wrapped up. Being confronted with someone like Byakuya probably left the impression that a significant portion of the people here were not entirely normal.
In any case.
Right now, the man was preparing to speak again, and the expression on his face had gone determined.
Just from reading that much, Yamamoto had already run through whatever Byakuya was about to say.
This one was about to have a relapse.
"Captain-Commander, I--"
The sentence didn't finish.
Because at that moment, from inside the arena below, a violent crash erupted.
Bang!
The sound hit the stands first, and both men turned toward it simultaneously.
Down in the arena, Zaraki Kenpachi -- who had been standing there without a clear opponent -- had just engaged Komamura Sajin.
Zaraki's right hand came down with the blade, landing solidly on Komamura's shoulder.
"Ha! It's not like either of us was doing anything. Come on, let's have a round!"
He had gotten too into it.
That was the most straightforward description.
In comparison to the original story, where Zaraki had been formally limited in what he could do as a seated officer, the current arrangement gave him frequent access to cross-squad sparring under the label of exchange training. It kept the edge on. But the quality of the opponents, more often than not, left him wanting.
The annual tournament was the one event he actually looked forward to.
Not getting a proper fight out of it?
Forget patience. One punch, right now, let's go.
The emotional surge had overridden the judgment he had been building for years, and the result was an extremely animated Zaraki turning on the nearest available person.
Attacking the referee outright drew visible reactions from everyone present.
Byakuya's stated intention had suddenly become beside the point.
Forget it.
As the dust settled, Squad 7 members rushed forward, but the figure emerging from the haze was already waving them off with one arm.
"Stay back!"
Komamura Sajin's voice was steady and absolute.
He had received a deliberate provocation and been directly struck.
His shoulder armor and reiatsu had taken the blow without a visible wound, but this was not the time to discuss injury assessments.
The quality of Komamura Sajin's voice from inside the iron helmet had shifted entirely.
"Zaraki -- you just attacked a tournament referee. I hope you understand what you're doing."
Faced with that, Zaraki only showed a wider, more unhinged grin.
He had passed the point of caring who was in front of him. He just wanted a better fight.
"Of course I know! Stop standing on ceremony and come at me if you've got anything worth showing!"
Words had reached their limit.
Komamura Sajin raised his voice and pushed every bit of reiatsu he had outward in a single burst.
"Tenken!"
With the call, his Zanpakuto was wrapped in a surge of bright reiatsu.
At almost the same moment, the space directly above Zaraki split open. A massive hand reached down from the gap, holding a blade the size of a building, and drove it straight down.
Tenken.
As Komamura's Shikai, this was a release that channeled reiatsu to activate portions of a larger body -- allowing Komamura to temporarily call on the limbs and weapons of Tenken Myoo in combat.
The release carried no special attribute enhancement on its own. But the sheer scale of it -- the weight, the reach, the absolute physical mass bearing down -- was enough to pose a genuinely lethal threat to anyone who couldn't match it for raw power.
As a tool for overwhelming an overmatched opponent, Tenken's Shikai was not something to dismiss.
And yet looking up at it, Zaraki's face showed not a trace of alarm.
What he showed instead was an open, delighted grin.
"Ha! Now we're talking! This is what I came for!"
He didn't dodge. He didn't step aside. He drove forward to meet it, his blade throwing off a surge of brilliant yellow light, reiatsu erupting outward from it in a chaotic blaze that caught every eye watching.
Zaraki had no Zanpakuto release of any kind. None, in any sense of the term. What had let him stand alongside other captains in the original story came down to one thing and one thing only.
He hit very, very hard.
The enormous hand came down with the weight of a collapsing mountain, carrying enough force to flatten anything beneath it.
What pushed back against it was a comparatively tiny figure wrapped in a blazing golden light. Like magma driving upward from the deep ocean floor -- surging up against the pressure, against the mass, against everything bearing down.
And scattering the arm completely.
What should have been a completely mismatched exchange ended with the giant arm dispersed and Komamura stumbling backward to regain his footing.
A captain-level figure, pushed back by a seated officer.
Audible reactions came from the watching crowd, and every word that reached Komamura's ears added a specific quality to what he was feeling.
"Zaraki Kenpachi!"
Komamura roared the name, the combination of shame and raw anger driving something deeper out of him, pushing his power past where it had been a moment before.
"Bankai!"
Looking down at the arena below, where the reiatsu level was climbing past anything the earlier matches had produced, Kyoraku Shunsui shook his head and let out a quiet sound.
This really did get complicated.