Chapter 103: Bankai: Tyrant, Suppression of the Eight Directions
Matsushita Yusuke turned at the sound.
Then his expression went somewhere complicated.
Because Kijishi's entrance was unlike anyone else's. The man had arrived carrying a presence that didn't leave room for doubt. Yusuke found himself needing outside confirmation, just to be sure.
"Did he... get fat?"
Kishinoshin stared for a moment, then recovered, and nodded heavily.
"He did! Matsushita-kun, Captain Kijishi got fat again!"
Not an optical illusion.
A body that was already large had expanded further, as if inflated from nowhere.
With each approaching footstep, Yusuke had to tilt his head back further. By the time Kijishi was close, looking straight ahead got him nothing but chest. He had to look all the way up just to find his face.
At the very minimum: six meters tall.
And height wasn't the only dimension. Horizontal expansion had happened too, in equal measure.
He watched as Kijishi raised his right hand, thick meaty knuckles drifting to the corner of his mouth, and made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and something uglier.
"Kid."
His voice had dropped into a register that was deeper and fuller than before, but threaded through with something strange. Almost hollow. Like whatever was filling him wasn't solid. Not a man of flesh and bone, but something pushed open from the inside, holding a shape it wasn't built for.
Yusuke looked up and met his eyes. The cruelty in them was clear and unhidden. Kijishi's face was pulling itself into something that had stopped short of human.
"I'm grateful to you. If you hadn't shown up, I would have been dead for certain."
A pause.
"As a reward, I'll make sure you die without suffering."
Pre-fight trash talk. Noted.
Yusuke wanted to return the favor. Sasakibe Chojiro's voice arrived before he could.
"Time is up. Both sides, prepare yourselves."
At that, Yusuke pulled his attention back inward.
Soifon came forward with his regular clothes and took the outfit away. She seemed about to say something before she left, but Yoruichi Shihoin and Urahara Kisuke had just arrived, slightly late, and the moment passed. Some things didn't belong in front of leadership. Soifon knew exactly where that line was.
Both sides stood in place while Sasakibe delivered the brief pre-fight statement and the standard disclaimer. The formalities were simple.
Whether or not death was an outcome was understood to fall within the normal range. But the name being fought under mattered more than the result.
"Squad 11 lives and dies by battle. This fight stakes your honor and your lives. Give everything you have. Do not disgrace the name Kenpachi."
With that, Sasakibe stepped back to Yamamoto's side.
A starting signal?
Not necessary.
Kijishi was already moving.
"Ha!"
A long, rolling laugh, and then that enormous body lurched forward with a bizarre and impossible lightness, launching itself like a cannonball aimed directly at Matsushita Yusuke.
He barely had time to register it.
He took a clean right hook and got launched like a tennis ball lobbed high and then hammered out of the air.
Boom!
The impact sent him flying with a near-sonic crack behind it, his body tracing a straight line through the air at a speed that had no business coming from something that size.
First exchange, and he'd already lost it.
"Is that..."
Hirako Shinji's jaw had come slightly open. He put a hand under his chin.
"Forcibly compressing reishi, gathering all of it inside his body?"
"That's correct, but it should be more complex than straightforward compression."
Beside him, Aizen Sosuke adjusted his glasses and spoke quietly.
"Compression alone can't forcibly contain spiritual energy inside the body. It isn't native to that space. Like swallowing explosives: neither safe nor practical."
So.
"This should be an expression of Kijishi's ability. It's rough. From his physical state alone you can tell the side effects will be severe. But in the short term, it's buying him a significant increase in strength."
In other words: a burst state purchased at the cost of his life.
That much, I already know.
Kijishi's eyes were lit with something that had gone past anger into a place with no name.
He had landed the first hit, but he wasn't getting carried away. He was standing on the edge of a cliff. More precisely: a tightrope walker on a high wire with nothing on either side. The only path forward was to keep moving, step by step, until he reached the other platform.
The cost was irrelevant.
I want to live.
He had moved first, landed the punch, and then impossibly, kept up with the trajectory, matching the launched body's speed rather than slowing down.
Don't want to die. Don't want to lose. So everything. All of it.
Eyes red, this Squad 11 captain running at his absolute limit, screaming past whatever was keeping him sane, spraying spit that smelled of something chemical and sharp.
"Bankai!!!"
Kijishi's roar carried across the entire Seireitei.
Boom!!!
Purple-red light erupted straight up.
Every captain present responded at the same moment, without coordination, without needing to discuss it. Reiatsu rising from all directions simultaneously.
Captains were not permitted to release their Zanpakuto inside the Seireitei. The reason had been explained before.
To prevent Kijishi's Bankai from tearing into the surrounding structures, their combined reiatsu formed a net around the fight area, a contained boundary, channeling the explosion's effects inward and keeping the damage within a controlled radius.
From a certain perspective: this was a cage match.
A heavy impact.
From within the purple-red lightning, a massive foot came down onto the ground.
Like a great beast forcing its way through a barrier and into the world. The figure that emerged was barely recognizable as Kijishi.
His cleaver had extended further. Barb-like growths had appeared along the spine of the blade and both flat sides.
The same growths spread across Kijishi's body, each one adding to the impression that whatever was standing there had moved past what a person was supposed to look like.
Purple stripes had appeared across his face. His cheeks had distorted, pulling back to expose his teeth, the whole expression like something out of a nightmare.
He swung the blade once, releasing the built-up pressure in a single outward sweep.
Kijishi felt the reiatsu surging through him and turned his face upward.
"Hah!"
He gave Matsushita Yusuke no room to interrupt. This time, from the opening moment, he led with the one thing that was going to win this.
Bankai: Tyrant, Suppression of the Eight Directions.