Chapter 063: Physical-Type: Release
Matsushita Yusuke wasn't deaf.
The two of them hadn't been keeping their voices down, and he'd caught every word of it.
Are you serious. Sending someone like that to spar with an Academy student. Not even a little worried about what happens when actual students show up and get split in half on the first exchange?
Though, to be fair, it probably wouldn't go that far.
Against a genuine Academy student with no exceptional background, Miasa's first move would roll over them before they had time to register what was happening. That much was realistic. But Squad 4 existed, and their entire function was exactly this kind of emergency. Professional medical response within Seireitei, with full support infrastructure directly accessible. Getting badly hurt here was not the same as getting badly hurt in the Rukongai.
Two layers of protection meant that even a student taking a serious loss wouldn't reach a critical threshold.
Which put Matsushita Yusuke in an awkward position.
The reason Miasa was fighting this seriously was because he'd actually read the level he was dealing with. This wasn't routine. This was genuine engagement.
A successor to a supposedly extinct sword school. Same kind of origin as Zaraki, pulled straight out of the harder end of the Rukongai. The type that had been fighting for survival before they'd ever heard the word Shinigami.
This wasn't a question of whether he'd killed before. The odds were that the number of people who had died at this person's hands was taller than Matsushita Yusuke was.
And Kijishi had put him up against a student.
The intent was obvious. This was a show of force. A statement about where Squad 11 sat in the pecking order.
Given the Kenpachi succession and the kind of world this man had come up in, the logic wasn't hard to follow. People like this found their satisfaction in holding the dominant position in any interaction. Winning was the only thing that actually meant anything to them.
The problem was that this reasoning only applied because Matsushita Yusuke had been good enough to trigger genuine effort.
So being strong is now my problem?
Wonderful.
He pushed the noise out and let his attention settle back onto the fight.
Nothing to do now but see it through.
Bandage finished, he rolled his shoulders carefully. His expression didn't hide the result.
It hurt.
He raised his right hand, pressed it lightly against the wound, then let his palm cover the area.
A pale green light gathered at his hand. Faint, diffuse. It separated from his palm and moved slowly into the damaged tissue.
The people watching reacted differently.
That's Kaido.
"This kid is just a student?"
"He... should be?"
The confusion was understandable.
Unlike Hado and Bakudo, Kaido was a distinct branch of Kido with a specific and unusual characteristic: it had no numbers. In the original story it had only ever come up in descriptions of Unohana's abilities. The explanation was simple enough. Kaido had essentially no barrier to entry. Anyone with reiatsu could convert it into restorative energy in some form. The difficulty was in the control. The shaping.
Kaido existed to heal. Not to destroy.
Once you applied it to a wound, the reiatsu needed to map onto the damaged tissue and reconstruct it in the correct sequence. Skip a step. Misalign the structure. Do it wrong in any one of several ways, and the restorative energy became the opposite of what it was supposed to be.
The results of that were unpleasant to think about.
Which was why Kaido, despite having no technical threshold, had almost no practitioners outside of Squad 4 who could actually use it effectively in a real situation. The exceptions were, in the original story, uniformly at vice-captain level or above.
The pattern was straightforward.
People who fought the most tended to understand it best. The people who had survived the most damage were the ones who had learned what healing actually required.
A certain very old woman was the most extreme proof of that principle.
For a combat-focused squad like Squad 11, where fighting was the entire culture, Kaido had its own natural appeal for exactly that reason.
"What is this kid's background?"
Kijishi looked sideways, the contempt in his expression replaced by something closer to genuine curiosity.
Aizen Sosuke kept his gaze on Matsushita Yusuke's back.
After a moment, a faint smile crossed his face.
"Just a student. Nothing remarkable."
Matsushita Yusuke finished the basic treatment. Across from him, Miasa's eyes had opened again.
Kido #2: Light had worked well as a surprise attack.
The double vision was still partly there. But it was no longer affecting function in any meaningful way.
Both of them looked at each other at the same moment. The situation felt like a reset to the beginning, but with a different weight to it than there had been at the start. Both faces were visibly more serious than before.
Round two.
This time Matsushita Yusuke didn't wait to read what Miasa was going to do. He made the choice actively, gathered himself, and stepped forward.
Aizen's eyebrow moved a fraction.
Going in first?
Yes.
The first step was the load. A short pull of breath, and the second step followed immediately.
Crack.
The third step came down and broke the stone beneath his foot with a sound that didn't match the apparent effort behind it.
Miasa, still in his guard position, caught the change immediately.
The speed was wrong. Matsushita Yusuke was accelerating. The rate of it was not linear.
Secret Art: Fleet Step.
Among the techniques Matsushita Yusuke had drawn as a reward, this was the one he had been saving for exactly this situation. The defining quality was its acceleration. Not steady speed. A stacking burst, each step building on the last.
Here it comes.
The fourth step landed on nothing and pushed off from empty air.
The distance between them compressed. From Matsushita Yusuke's perspective, Miasa appeared to be rushing toward him rather than the other way around. Full concentration. He read the remaining gap, waited for the precise edge of Miasa's reaction window, and put down the fifth step.
Into close range.
Three meters of distance, collapsed in an instant. Create an information gap with the shunpo movement. Use the small advantages that opened in it. This was exactly the method Soifon and Yoruichi favored most. In the time he'd spent at the Squad 2 facility, something of it had worked its way into how he thought about movement.
Shunpo wasn't where his depth was. But against this level of seated officer, it appeared to be enough.
Miasa's face went tight in an instant.
The alarm resolved itself into something calm. He pulled back, dropped his knee, turned his body halfway around, and the right hand was already on the hilt.
Matsushita Yusuke watched it happen and felt exactly zero surprise.
Another school technique. The form was telling him that before his brain had finished identifying it.
Going through it move by move was going to be too slow.
Matsushita Yusuke closed his grip on his Zanpakuto. Eyes narrowing, he spoke the words inward, quietly.
Physical-type: Release.