Chapter 076: Damn You, Kyoka Suigetsu
The sky, already dark, went darker still, as if a deeper and more final blackness had been drawn across it. Even the moon disappeared.
Aizen Sosuke simply tilted his head up and looked at it. No other reaction. No other movement.
Tosen, by contrast, reacted visibly.
He turned his head to one side, like a person trying to confirm something they weren't sure they had perceived correctly. His brow drew together.
The expression that followed was, in its own way, remarkable: confusion first, then genuine surprise, and then something past surprise that had no clean name.
Half a second, start to finish.
"Matsushita-kun, you..."
No words came after that.
Because the situation was exactly what had been established before: high-numbered Kido was classified. The later-numbered Hado in particular were under a full restriction against outside transmission. Not just Academy students, but even registered Shinigami within the Gotei 13 didn't have clearance to access that information.
The process for gaining access was bureaucratic to the point of being punitive. Submit a request, obtain authorization. Enter the secured records room under the observation of multiple witnesses. Complete the reading within the time limit. Exit the room, re-enter lockdown.
Tosen, as a Squad 9 member, was familiar enough with that process to find it depressingly routine.
And even then: knowing the incantation and understanding the mechanics was one thing. Actually completing the full sequence and successfully releasing a high-level Hado was something else. The number of people who could do that was extremely small.
So what was he looking at right now?
An Academy student had just released Hado #90. And it had worked.
The content wasn't entirely consistent with the version Tosen knew. But that was not what was pulling his attention. The fact that it had happened at all was.
Matsushita Yusuke's ability had just made itself impossible to overlook.
Time moved regardless.
As the incantation completed, the dark surge that had been building overhead came down like something that had been waiting for permission.
The already dim sky erupted with a churning flood of reiatsu.
Aizen Sosuke stood where he was and watched the black torrent roll and break toward him, vast and loud. And at the last moment, he smiled. Calm, and with something underneath it that might have been satisfaction.
"Excellent."
The moment the word left him, he was gone.
The surge spread across the ground in all directions. It covered everything visible, like a release valve opened all at once from directly above, dark and heavy and total.
Tosen scrambled back, and Matsushita Yusuke swayed slightly where he stood, lights briefly appearing at the edges of his vision.
The cost had been significantly higher than expected.
The sensation was somewhere between being dragged out of bed at midnight and made to run ten kilometers with a full pack. That was approximately accurate.
His chest was visibly rising and falling. Fine sweat had broken out across his forehead.
Hado #90 lived up to its number. The reiatsu it had pulled out of him was close to everything he had, and the cold sweat running down his back was the clearest evidence of that.
But.
The process might be painful. The result was still good.
It had worked. The Kido had fully manifested. That was the only proof that mattered right now.
Aizen wanted to see what he was made of. Answering with his favorite technique was, in its own way, a form of consideration.
He just didn't know yet how well it had landed.
Still thinking through it, Matsushita Yusuke raised one hand to wipe his forehead and squinted out at the field ahead.
The black surge was subsiding.
Beneath his feet, dark fluid crept slowly across the ground. The earth absorbed it, stained deep black for a moment, and then the color dissolved without sound, breaking apart into scattered spiritual particles that scattered and faded.
The original form of Kurohitsugi: lock the reishi in place, then execute countless piercing strikes and slashes within the bounded space.
What Matsushita Yusuke had done was change the binding structure from a fixed form to a liquid one. The raw lethality had taken a significant hit. But the coverage had expanded considerably.
The fluid reishi had spread across the entire field like something corrosive, dissolving everything it touched without a sound, and then gradually sinking into the earth.
After a few slow breaths, the ground resolved itself into something new: uneven, cratered, broken in a way that looked like the surface of another world entirely.
Tosen, sensing the aftermath through his own perception rather than his eyes, swallowed once.
He understood that none of it had been aimed at him. He knew that on a rational level.
And still, the mental substitution happened anyway.
If that had been directed at him: Tosen could see no response available. Nothing but waiting.
Unless he had acted before Matsushita Yusuke could release it.
The thought didn't have time to finish. Something else pulled his attention.
A figure.
The man who had been standing in the middle of that black torrent was still standing there. Upright. Unmarked. As if nothing that had just happened had happened at all.
"Well done."
At those two words, Tosen and Matsushita Yusuke produced the same reaction simultaneously.
Two blank stares.
Not a mark on him? Really?
Matsushita Yusuke had gone all-out. It might not have matched the original version of Kurohitsugi from the source material, the one delivered with a full incantation by someone operating at an entirely different level. But swapping in something meaningfully strong should still have at minimum made a dent.
Was Matsushita Yusuke's absolute maximum genuinely not enough to get Aizen's attention?
What exactly was this man made of?
While Matsushita Yusuke was still sitting with that question, a voice came from behind him.
"Reconstructing Kurohitsugi to this extent, Matsushita-kun. Your talent for Kido is well beyond what I had expected. This is very good."
Aizen's voice. But why was it coming from behind him?
Matsushita Yusuke turned with a genuinely confused expression and found an intact Aizen smiling at him from several steps back.
Then he looked back toward the figure still standing at the center of the ruined field.
As he watched, that silhouette rose slightly, like a bubble lifting from water, raised one hand in a casual wave, smiled pleasantly, and then dispersed: crumbling apart into scattered ash that drifted and disappeared.
Damn you, Kyoka Suigetsu.
When had it even activated?
Matsushita Yusuke finally understood why the captains in the original story had been so furious about it.
Throwing a full attack into what turned out to be empty air was bad enough on its own.
But this particular empty air smiled at you, said something infuriating, and hit you twice while you were still processing it.
How were you supposed to deal with that?
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