Chapter 296: Reiatsu Without Equal
Almost at the exact moment the cry rang out.
The nearby building detonated.
No warning. No buildup. Like a charge packed between walls suddenly reaching ignition all at once -- the structure came apart in a roar, light and heat blasting outward in every direction simultaneously, racing each other across the grounds.
The moment didn't last long.
Because something arrived first, overtaking the blast entirely.
A shape Matsushita Yusuke knew better than almost anything in the world.
Azure reiatsu came surging outward in silence -- a wall of it, the kind that moved the way a dam break moves, covering everything in its path, rolling over every solid thing in its way without stopping.
Buildings. Trees. Planted greenery. Everything the eye could reach became, in the most literal sense, a target.
Under that kind of force, in the span of a single breath, a good portion of the squad compound was reduced to rubble.
Aizen Sosuke raised one hand and pressed it forward lightly.
A translucent reishi barrier rose in front of them -- a fixed point in the flood, standing without flinching as the torrent split around it.
His captain's haori and those of the others nearby were caught in the updraft, snapping and billowing. At the front of the group, Aizen's mouth curved at the corner, and the expression that crossed his face was something close to delight.
"This is... really something."
The words were still in the air.
And Matsushita Yusuke was already gone from where he had been standing.
Tosen's first instinct was to follow. Aizen stopped him with an outstretched hand.
"Let him go. It's his child -- he probably hasn't thought to look at this from that angle yet."
Rather than saying it directly and making someone else's realization happen on his terms, Aizen preferred this. Let things develop. Let the observation arrive on its own.
"The principle that strong parents produce strong children is generally reliable. But something like this -- being born with a constitution like that from the start -- perhaps it suggests that the quality of the soul itself can be passed through bloodline."
Whatever the answer turned out to be.
This particular question had his full attention now.
Meanwhile, Matsushita Yusuke was moving against the current.
He called his reiatsu up around himself and drove straight into the flood. Like a bear pushing upstream through a river, forcing against the current, following it back to its source.
His figure flickered. Distorted. Then reappeared beside the hospital bed.
"Yah!"
Kotetsu Isane, who had not had time to process the sequence of events, nearly went sideways from the shock.
What had happened was genuinely beyond the parameters of what she had been prepared for. One moment everything was intact. Then a cry -- and an invisible force came sweeping sideways and tore the compound apart. Even at her level, even as a vice-captain, she had not been fast enough to respond in the first moment.
If Unohana Retsu had not been present --
She and the rest of the Squad 4 members might have been caught in that and simply erased.
"It's Captain Matsushita..."
The voices reached him, but his attention was entirely elsewhere.
He didn't even register Unohana looking at him from across the room. His gaze was on Soifon.
"Soifon. Are you alright?"
"I -- yes. I'm fine."
Lips faintly pale. Nothing else visible on the surface.
The patient's condition was stable. Matsushita Yusuke's gaze moved from her to the source of the problem.
"Waaah -- waah!"
The baby was crying.
And with each cry, ripple-patterns spread outward in visible waves -- the kind that looked like they were resonating with the space itself, concentric distortions radiating into the air.
Reiatsu was forming again. Silently, steadily.
Matsushita Yusuke watched the full sequence of it happen and extended his right hand without hesitation.
His palm carried a bright trace of reishi. He coated his entire hand in a layer of reiatsu.
Everyone in the room saw the motion.
Some of them couldn't keep quiet.
"Wait--"
The action read as decisive and sharp -- looked, from a distance, exactly like someone was about to bring a hand down on an infant.
It was not that.
Matsushita Yusuke scooped, and the small shape was in his arms.
The reishi coating wasn't for force. It was for speed -- a technique closer to cutting through the interval between positions instantaneously, so that contact happened before anything could respond. A fast grab. Or rather, a fast catch.
He landed on his feet and looked down at what he was holding.
"Ooh... aaah..."
Maybe the smell was wrong. Maybe the handling didn't agree with her. She still seemed to want to cry.
Matsushita Yusuke transferred her back to her mother without delay.
Soifon's arms closed around her on reflex, the crook of her right arm settling into position, and under that warmth the small face gradually calmed, lips smacking faintly, and then the baby was deeply asleep again.
The whole sequence completed, and the wreckage of the moment, which had been complete chaos, slowly settled back toward something approaching order.
People looked at each other.
Kotetsu Isane was already issuing direction.
"Search the rubble! Set up temporary shelters! Move -- don't waste time!"
With someone running the scene, the others who needed to step away to talk could do so.
Unohana Retsu lowered her hands and looked at Matsushita Yusuke with a complicated expression.
"Captain Matsushita. I think we need to have a conversation."
By the time she said it, Aizen and Tosen had already crossed the distance and were standing in the same space.
Matsushita Yusuke, facing that many sets of eyes, produced an expression that was rare for him -- genuinely at a loss. He seemed to think for a moment, then came back to himself and gave a small nod.
"Right... yes. Of course. Let's go."
They moved.
Before he left, Matsushita Yusuke looked back toward Soifon.
As Aizen had implied a few minutes ago -- in all the urgency of the moment, the focus on whether she was alright and the instinct to get in there and do something, he had not stopped to actually look.
His child.
What kind of reiatsu she was actually carrying.
What he was seeing now -- properly looking -- was different from an ordinary spiritual being, and it was different in a way that might also be connected to her mental state being as newly formed as it was. What he saw was a sea that didn't stop moving. Something that churned and rolled and appeared to be in a constant state of force even in silence.
Beneath that churning, the depth of the reiatsu beneath it registered at a level that was.
Close to captain-class.
Or possibly beyond it.