Chapter 012: Yoruichi Shihoin
A few days slipped by in a blink.
The internship date was coming up fast.
On the morning it arrived, Matsushita Yusuke was up early. Once he'd dressed and tidied up, he ran through his usual morning drills -- shadow swings in his room, basic Zanjutsu repetitions, nothing complicated. Just enough to keep the fundamentals sharp.
Having the System helped. But after some testing, Matsushita Yusuke had run into something the System genuinely couldn't do for him.
Skill proficiency under pressure.
Kido was the clearest example. He'd learned the techniques, acquired the shortcuts, understood the mechanics. But in a real fight, cutting a chant short changed the power output in ways that required actual judgment. The right call at the right moment, or you were working against yourself. Half-measures in the wrong situation were worse than no measures at all.
Theory and live application were completely different things.
He wasn't going to get lazy just because he had a System. And beyond that -- this world didn't run on logic. Nobody could explain how he'd ended up here in the first place. For all he knew, the Soul King had something to do with it. Some large and unknowable hand nudging pieces around a board he couldn't see.
That was the kind of thought you couldn't untangle. Better to just stay careful and leave it at that.
Morning drills done, quick wash, and he was jogging toward the classroom building.
Today was the practical session. Assembly first, then action.
He arrived to find roughly three hundred students already packed into the room. The scale of it was genuinely absurd. Matsushita Yusuke found a corner, settled in, and looked around.
All years combined, no separation by grade. Whoever designed this internship structure had a genuine talent for cutting overhead. Absolute efficiency.
Of all the first-years, only about a quarter had chosen the Shinigami track. Factor in the split by duty type, and the number of students in his specific cohort -- Hollow hunting -- could be counted on two hands. He didn't really know any of them, either. After a moment's hesitation, Matsushita Yusuke stayed where he was.
He didn't have friends. Not because he actively avoided people. More that there was simply no time. Every free hour was going toward classes, quests, and grinding stats. No space left in the schedule for small talk with people who weren't going to appear in any quest window.
Aizen had brought up something similar once, in passing. Thinking about it now, maybe the man had recognized something familiar when he looked at Yusuke.
Before that thought could go anywhere, footsteps.
Getting louder. Coming from the direction of the podium.
Matsushita Yusuke looked up.
The Academy instructor was following someone in, and his expression was something Yusuke had never seen on the man before. Fawning wasn't a strong enough word for it. The face of a person who had completely abandoned dignity and was fine with that.
The one walking ahead of him was built like a wall. Broad shoulders, solid frame, the kind of presence that made you reassess the distance between yourself and the exit.
He caught the noise behind him. His expression soured. He glanced back, and the look he sent was sharp enough that the instructor let out a startled yelp and went completely still.
"Omaeda, quit scaring people."
The figure at the front stopped, turned around, and landed a fist against the broad man's shoulder. Not particularly hard, but enough. Omaeda straightened up immediately, nodded, and answered in a low voice.
"Understood, Yoruichi-sama."
The woman in front leapt up onto the podium in one easy motion.
Ponytail. Haori. Light on her feet in a way that made it look effortless. She landed, set both hands on her hips, and looked out at the room. Her eyebrows angled upward with the kind of energy that suggested she was perpetually two seconds from doing something impressive, and her voice matched it completely.
"Listen up! I'm Yoruichi Shihoin, captain of Squad 2, and I'm the one running your internship rotation this time around! So. Let's make it count!"
Yoruichi Shihoin.
The smooth, sharp, effortlessly cool older sister from the original story. The one who'd stepped in to help Ichigo when he was completely out of his depth in Soul Society, and made it look like she was doing him a favor by bothering.
He'd had some sense of who it would be from his conversations with Aizen. But knowing in advance and actually seeing the person were two different things.
Matsushita Yusuke felt the excitement land and didn't try to suppress it.
She'd been a genuine favorite. As fan-favorite characters went, she sat near the top of the list for reasons that went beyond the obvious. Her actual characterization held up: strong, sharp, noble-blooded, never once lost the cool. And later in the story there'd been that slow-burn situation with Soifon that had a certain emotional complexity to it -- the kind that made you read it twice and still not be entirely sure what you were looking at.
All of that to say: getting to see Yoruichi Shihoin in person, at this age, in this context?
Worth every inconvenience this world had thrown at him so far.
Just...
She doesn't quite have that effortless vibe from the original story, does she.
Though when he thought it through, that made sense. In the main timeline, Yoruichi had been one of the people caught up in Aizen's hollowfication experiments. Someone who'd lived through a particular kind of betrayal. The version of her who'd come out the other side of that was going to carry herself differently -- more lived-in, maybe. More complete in ways that came at a cost.
The version standing on the podium right now hadn't been through any of that yet.
At the same time, Matsushita Yusuke found himself understanding the Academy instructor's reaction a lot better.
Noble.
That word carried actual weight in Soul Society. Not ceremonial weight. Real weight.
In a world built the way this one was, a noble name meant privilege. It meant authority that didn't invite questions. Part of that came from the structure of the place itself -- rank carrying a kind of unspoken legitimacy that people just accepted. But more than that, the four great noble houses of Soul Society each held deep secrets and genuine power. Not just titles. Real influence over things that mattered.
When social standing and actual strength reinforced each other, that position became impossible to shake.
And the person standing up there?
The youngest clan head in the entire history of the Shihoin family.
At this point in the timeline, the Kuchiki family's head -- Byakuya -- probably hadn't even taken the seat yet. But Yoruichi was already the genuine article. A real clan head, carrying it without ceremony.
Same title. Completely different weight.
Thoughts still drifting, Matsushita Yusuke pulled his attention back to the podium. Yoruichi Shihoin had already moved on to laying out the actual plan.
"Every squad in the Gotei 13 takes a turn running these supervision rotations. This cycle it fell to Squad 2, so you're going to get a proper look at how the Stealth Force handles things!"
Rotating supervision.
In theory, that was the system.
Though certain squads had always been quietly left off the list.