Chapter 144: Cleanup
Shattered fragments arced through the air and fell.
Under the stunned, almost dumbfounded stares of everyone present, Matsushita Yusuke slowly closed his eyes. Peaceful. Composed. A stark contrast to Kensei's hysterical expression.
"What did you DO to me?!"
He roared and tried to charge, but the other two were there first, holding him in place.
Love grabbed his shoulder.
"Calm down, Kensei!"
Rojuro seized his right arm and pulled him back.
"This accomplishes nothing. Fall back!"
Unable to use Bankai.
This kind of situation was profoundly baffling whenever it appeared, and could only be described as demoralizing.
From a pure timeline standpoint, locking out Bankai was supposed to be a Quincy thing. That's two whole arcs ahead of schedule.
Something this far outside normal logic was genuinely frightening. The reaction was understandable.
But Matsushita Yusuke was not going to give anyone much time to think.
He raised his right hand, index and middle fingers extended. A targeting lock formed in an instant, and the activation completed.
"Twin Lotus Hado #33 Sokatsui."
Two surging heat waves erupted skyward. They spiraled as they rose, twisting into twin columns of blazing azure light that came driving straight down toward all three of them.
"Move!"
Love's shout came sharp. All three figures were swallowed by the surge and vanished into blazing heat.
One clean hit?
Not quite.
Matsushita Yusuke turned his head and raised both hands.
"Thunder Cannon."
"Thunderclap Scatter."
Two different forms of bright yellow light bloomed and fired, shooting toward both flanks before the smoke had even begun to settle.
The three had barely broken out of the first wave and had no time to breathe before the follow-up Kido came through.
"Ugh..."
Kensei and Love staggered out in rough shape. Kensei's left arm was badly scorched from a direct hit. Rojuro, on the other side, had even lost his captain's haori, his condition no better.
But they were clear.
Abandoning any pretense of elegance, Rojuro swung his right hand and sent Kinshara out in a sweeping arc, then extended his left palm flat and pushed toward Yusuke from across the distance.
"Sokatsui!!!"
A compressed reiatsu mass formed instantly and launched toward Yusuke like a projectile.
Yusuke barely glanced at it and said it without inflection.
"Defense."
BOOM!!!
An invisible wall formed instantly and absorbed the entire attack without flinching.
"Tch."
Rojuro narrowed his eyes, bit down, gave a short noise of frustration.
No Zanpakuto getting through. Chant-free Kido landing nowhere near intended force. Nothing was landing the way it should.
Matsushita Yusuke's gaze emerged through the scattering smoke, flat and cold, as though he were watching insects.
Done?
Then it's my turn.
He turned his right hand over and made a casual beckoning motion.
"Sokatsui."
A sharp intake of air, like the breath before something collapsed into a black hole, a pulling sensation that was almost violent.
"Not—"
Rojuro stumbled, caught out of position, and was swallowed by the detonating light.
"Rojuro!!!"
Love let out a furious shout and came charging in. He drew his Zanpakuto, raised it over his head with both hands, and brought it down hard at Yusuke.
"Why are you doing this?! What is the point?!"
CLANG!
Sparks scattered. The blade stopped dead in the air, going nowhere.
The invisible wall Matsushita Yusuke had created was hard in the most literal meaning of the phrase.
"Why?"
The reason was more or less beside the point, but this was a rare chance to work on morale.
Matsushita Yusuke was not going to waste it.
"Because I want to get stronger, obviously. What's wrong with a Kenpachi who loves to fight?"
"You..."
That actually... kind of made sense?
Love went momentarily speechless.
Matsushita Yusuke took the fraction of a second.
His right hand spread wide open, then slowly closed, as though gripping something invisible and crushing it inch by inch.
And at the same moment.
The azure glow in his eyes flickered.
Bankai: Ichion Enpo.
At its core, this was indeed a Zanpakuto that controlled reishi.
But compared to the Shikai, the Bankai had pushed it one decisive step further.
It had expanded the range and capabilities of the true words themselves.
At the moment of Bankai release, Yusuke's reiatsu spread outward all at once. Like Captain Kyoraku's Bankai in the original story, this territory-like demarcation of a surrounding area was where Yusuke's capabilities operated.
His reiatsu permeated every point in the space completely, seeping into the gaps between everything. Like a tree with roots driven deep, this level of spread and control meant Matsushita Yusuke had complete command over every piece of the terrain within those boundaries.
Reishi was his extension. The mark of his presence. The reason Matsushita Yusuke could be, in effect, everywhere within this space.
Because the control had reached this level, Yusuke could even achieve something close to dying and coming back.
The reversal, the suppression of Zanpakuto releases: both were, at their core, just different expressions of the same reishi control. The former only required directing his own body. The latter was the environment pressing down on individuals within the space. In principle, anyone could break through the suppression if they were willing to pay a high enough cost and force their release anyway.
But the situation wouldn't be great for them. Without access to external reishi, anyone fighting Matsushita Yusuke inside Ichion Enpo's range was fighting on his home ground.
The ability had its limits.
Step outside the effective range, and Ichion Enpo had no hold on you.
And the volume of reishi remaining in the domain was also a measure of how much he had left.
Compared to the moment of release, roughly two-fifths of the capacity was already gone.
Getting close to half.
But the fight had gone unexpectedly smoothly. In one sense, this ability was a textbook first-encounter wipe. Sealing Zanpakuto release was simply too far ahead of anything these three had ever needed to prepare for. None of them had any answer for it.
And right now?
Two of them were down. The remaining one was still moving on impulse. Before he had a chance to realize something was fundamentally wrong, it was time to close this out.
So how?
"Impressive that you made it this close. Here's your reward."
The words landed.
The entire azure glow of the world around them surged toward a boiling point.
Love's expression changed. He didn't know what Yusuke was about to do. But it was not going to be something good.
"Stop!"
Nobody's listening.
Matsushita Yusuke's right hand clenched suddenly, closing into a fist.
He ignited every last piece of remaining reiatsu in the domain and turned it into explosive fuel.
Matsushita Yusuke had found his one answer.
His expression reflected back at him in the reiatsu sea as it turned blazing red, and he grinned. Wide. Unbothered.
"Ittō Kasō: Modified."
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