Chapter 083: Roar, Bawei!
The Bakudo chains held.
Several python-thick chains of condensed reishi had burst from the air on both sides, wrapping around Kijishi and locking into place. They clung to his body and climbed, tightening upward until both of his hands were completely immobilized.
Three overlapping Bakudo in three different colors. And inside all of that, the man built like a bear let out an enraged roar.
"What did you do to me?!"
"Just some Bakudo."
As the words left his mouth, Matsushita Yusuke drew his reiatsu inward and compressed it, sharply increasing the binding strength all at once.
"Ngh..."
Kijishi Kenpachi's whole body lurched. He staggered, the way a person staggers when something has seized every part of them at once.
His expression said the experience was not pleasant.
It wasn't.
The training of the past half month had turned Matsushita Yusuke into someone different. Chant-free Bakudo still delivering over eighty percent power was one of the tools he now carried into a fight without thinking twice about it.
Soifon had been watching with worry. Now, watching him work, something shifted in her expression.
When did he get this strong?
He had been roughly on her level before. Not anymore. Somewhere in the time between then and now he had crossed a line she hadn't been tracking, and the distance he had put between himself and a captain-level fight was not the gap she had expected.
What exactly had he been doing?
The thoughts formed and she pushed them aside.
Because this was not over.
"Stop standing there! Press the advantage!"
A duel like this wasn't supposed to have outside commentary. Soifon understood that well enough; she had been raised to understand it. The protocol was clear.
She said it anyway.
Because she could see exactly how serious the situation still was. This was not over.
"Cheap tricks!"
A roar, and then the reiatsu surged off Kijishi Kenpachi in a single wave.
Every binding that had been on him snapped apart at once. The light bands, the reishi clusters, all of it shattered like a dam giving way, breaking and scattering in every direction.
Kijishi straightened up. His face had gone ugly in a way that was different from before. The look he fixed on Matsushita Yusuke wasn't just anger. It was colder than that.
"I'm going to tear you apart, kid!"
The casual ease he had walked in with was completely gone. Matsushita Yusuke's performance had forced something out of him that he hadn't planned on spending. More power than he'd intended to show. More than he'd wanted to need.
A fight like this, even a win wouldn't look like one. It wouldn't look like anything close to dignified.
He didn't need to look behind him to feel it. His subordinates were staring. He could feel the shape of their attention changing. That awareness that his own people were watching and recalculating was worse than anything Matsushita Yusuke had done to him directly.
He couldn't let this continue. Couldn't stop it either.
There was only one path out: finish it now. Put Matsushita Yusuke on the ground and do it fast enough that the damage got contained.
Restraint was no longer an option.
He reached for his waist and drew his blade in a single motion.
"Roar, Bawei!"
Bang.
Reiatsu flooded the street.
Unlike Soifon's release, quiet and precise and contained, nothing wasted.
This was the opposite of that.
The moment Kijishi's Zanpakuto released, it announced itself to the entire district. The presence it put out didn't build gradually or ask permission. It arrived all at once.
Even the sky responded. Dark clouds materialized overhead and pressed downward, visible enough that no one within range could mistake what they were looking at. The weight of the reiatsu landed on everyone in the area. A tightening in the chest. The sensation of the air itself being drawn out of the space around them.
Soifon's brow pulled together hard. Her right hand came up and pressed lightly against her sternum.
Zanpakuto release.
Plenty of Shinigami could reach release. That wasn't unusual. What was unusual was someone who had genuinely mastered their Zanpakuto at a foundational level. Even at just Shikai, that kind of mastery operated at a level that had nothing to do with what an ordinary vice-captain could put up against.
This is going to be a problem.
The reason was simple. In a direct exchange, there was no version of this where Matsushita Yusuke came out ahead.
Aizen and Tosen, watching from further back, were not arriving at the same conclusion.
"That presence..."
Tosen turned his head, reading the reiatsu through his other senses, and let out a quiet sound of genuine surprise.
"And this is only Shikai? Isn't that a little..."
He settled on the word.
"It feels like a Zanpakuto that's already reached Bankai."
"Is that so." Aizen heard the assessment and something in his expression shifted. Not surprise. Something closer to satisfaction. "Interesting that you'd say that."
A brief pause.
"From my perspective, I'd call it something else entirely."
"What do you mean?"
"Every Zanpakuto ability is its own thing. No two are alike." Aizen's gaze drifted toward the dark clouds pressing down above Kijishi's position. "For someone who craves recognition, guards his reputation obsessively, and cannot afford to be seen as anything less than dominant... what kind of ability do you think a Zanpakuto grows from a soul like that?"
Before Tosen could answer, the situation in the street changed.
Kijishi Kenpachi cut through the wind and stepped out from the churning dark. Purple-black lightning crackled across his body in slow rolling currents. His appearance itself hadn't changed. But the impression he gave had shifted entirely, as if a human shape had been stretched over something that had never been human to begin with.
What drew every eye, though, wasn't the lightning.
It was the blade.
What Kijishi now held was enormous. A massive serrated cleaver, the blade thick and heavy, the edge jagged and irregular, more the shape of something made to destroy than to cut. In terms of length alone it was more than double what his sealed Zanpakuto had been. The design was completely wild.
Across the flat of the blade, dark red reiatsu flickered and shifted in an unstable layer, the kind of light that made the weapon look alive and not particularly friendly about it.
"Kid."
Kijishi spoke.
Across his face, markings had appeared. Fine jet-black lines, dense and intricate, surfacing slowly like something that had always been underneath. Like a totem pressed from the inside out. They made what had already been an intimidating presence into something heavier.
Zanpakuto: Bawei.
The ability was not complicated. It wasn't trying to be. Violent amplification. Reiatsu intimidation. Blanket stat increases across every category. No mechanics. No conditions. It had abandoned the concept of abilities entirely and gone straight for raw numbers.
"Too late to surrender now."
He raised the blade. Two long hot breaths pushed out through his nostrils.
"I'm going to cut you to pieces!"
Facing Kijishi's bluster, Matsushita Yusuke did not look afraid.
He laughed. Open and unguarded.
"Go ahead and try."
His hand came up and touched his waist, easy and unhurried. The long blade slid into his grip without a sound. In the space between one breath and the next, in that brief still moment, everything was ready.
Zanpakuto: Physical-type...
Release.
Bang!