Chapter 082: Triple Combo!
You're the... challenger?
What does that even mean? Why am I the challenger?
Kijishi's head took a few seconds to process phrasing that operated above its usual register.
When the meaning arrived: you're being mocked. That registered clearly. His expression went ugly.
"What kind of nonsense is that!"
If the kid had come in with his head down and begged for mercy, Kijishi might have made it quick. That door had just closed. The look on his face, and that line: both gone.
Irritating little brat.
He didn't reach for his blade.
That was its own statement. Using a weapon on someone not worth the effort: a method of communicating contempt that people from Kijishi's background understood immediately. You don't rate steel. You rate a fist.
Captain-level reiatsu coiled around his right fist, and the air around his hand visibly thickened.
From the outer ring, Soifon's brow had pulled together hard.
By any reading, this had no good outcome. The gap between captain-level and everything below it wasn't a matter of degree, it was a matter of kind. The reiatsu alone was a different category of existence. She couldn't construct a scenario where Matsushita Yusuke won this. If he hadn't pushed three times to do this himself, she would never have agreed to stand here.
What is he thinking?
Not far from the confrontation, slightly removed from the crowd, two more observers had not taken their eyes off the situation.
Aizen Sosuke.
His presence here made a certain kind of sense.
What was less expected was Tosen Kaname being there too, his expression carrying a visible tension.
"What's the matter, Tosen? Nervous?"
Addressed by his leader, Tosen's first instinct was to deny it.
"No, I..."
But in the brief pause that followed, his head dropped slightly, and he gave the honest answer.
"I am... a little worried."
"That's natural. Nothing wrong with it."
Concern for someone in your circle wasn't something that needed to be defended. And given what was in front of them, the concern was reasonable by any standard.
Aizen smiled and said:
"By Matsushita-kun's current level of ability, he has made remarkable progress. But going up against a captain is still a stretch."
"Then why did you..."
"Why did I let him accept the invitation?"
Leaders answered their own questions. There was nothing to add.
"Tosen. In your view: what does a strong person require above everything else?"
Don't answer a question with a question.
"I don't know, sir."
"The willingness to challenge what is difficult, and the resolve not to turn back from it."
Aizen said it without any particular weight.
"Calculating the odds is the sensible approach. But no one reaches a summit without a heart that keeps moving toward it."
He glanced sideways, with something that might have been amusement. Tosen's expression remained unreadable regardless, so Aizen let it go.
"Tosen. You have your own considerable ability. But compared to Matsushita-kun, there are still things you need to develop. Things that would need to change."
It was put gently. The content wasn't.
The implication was direct: Tosen didn't yet possess the prerequisite for what a truly strong person was.
Tosen didn't argue. His head went down slightly, and he gave a quiet, settled response.
"I understand. But... are you really not doing anything to help him?"
"Don't worry. I'm not gambling with Matsushita-kun's life." A brief pause. "That person..."
Aizen stopped himself. He seemed to be choosing words with some care, and after a moment said quietly:
"He has a very clear way of thinking that's entirely his own. And he's different from every other Shinigami I've known."
That was as far as he took it. The interest in continuing faded from his expression. He looked out toward the street.
"Enough. It's about to start."
Tosen extended his perception and turned his attention toward the confrontation ahead.
What level would someone who could hold Aizen Sosuke's genuine interest actually reach?
He found, without quite expecting it, that he wanted to see it too.
In the open street, the most striking thing in the moment wasn't the two figures facing each other.
It was the force that gathered at Kijishi's fist and the air that moved ahead of it.
The blue-white reishi condensed to something close to a physical state, collecting on his right fist as it came down in a full overhead drop aimed directly at Matsushita Yusuke.
Reishi compressed that close to solid: that alone indicated a level of spiritual pressure that ordinary people couldn't come near. A direct hit from that wouldn't just hurt. The consequences would be significantly worse.
Matsushita Yusuke's expression didn't change.
He watched the strike come in from the far point of its arc all the way to the near point, and said, evenly:
"Bakudo #61: Rikujokoro."
The air around both of them snapped tight.
Six fragments of bright yellow reishi materialized from every direction and drove inward, converging on Kijishi Kenpachi at the center.
A series of sharp impacts, not one sound but many landing almost simultaneously.
The six reishi rods meshed and locked together with the precision of something mechanical, binding Kijishi Kenpachi completely in place.
"What the..."
The expression he managed was pure surprise. His movement had been cut off entirely before he'd processed what had happened.
Bakudo? An Academy student is casting this?
Kijishi hadn't come up through formal training, but his read on combat had always been sharp, and it was giving him a clear answer right now.
This is not a level any Academy student should be able to produce.
And there was something else.
Why does my whole body feel wrong? What is this?!
"What did you just do?!"
The fact that he had apparently never encountered Bakudo before was, in its own way, informative.
Matsushita Yusuke didn't respond. He simply continued.
"Bakudo #62: Hyapporankan."
A series of impacts rained down from above like something dropped from height, landing across Kijishi's spine and back.
Rods of deep crimson-violet light drove into his joints and limbs, compounding the immobility that was already there.
"You—!"
Before Kijishi finished, Matsushita Yusuke's right hand pointed down again.
"Bakudo #63: Sajo Sabaku."
Three in a row.