Chapter 165: Go Up There... and Give Him a Couple Smacks
Personal business was a perfectly good reason. At this stage, Aizen treated his people fairly well. Complete the main assignments, then free time was yours to use. And as long as you weren't violating any of the core principles, Kyoka Suigetsu made for excellent cover.
Matsushita Yusuke watched Aizen and Tosen leave Hueco Mundo, then stood alone with his arms crossed, thinking.
Free time. Time to use it properly.
First: the most urgent item.
He took out the map, matched it against his current position, and headed toward a marked location.
Hueco Mundo was desolate, but with enough reference points to navigate by, he found the area quickly.
He stopped on a slight rise and looked out toward the distance.
Over there.
A very dense silhouette.
He didn't approach immediately. He stood at a comfortable distance and watched.
In a place with nothing but wind, sand, and silence, you could wait a full day in most spots without anything happening.
But this place was different.
Because the silhouette in the distance marked one of the locations mentioned as a side area in the source material.
The Forest of Menos.
Despite the name, it had nothing to do with trees. The "vegetation" making up its structure was pale white branching protrusions.
Yusuke and Tosen had surveyed the area before and confirmed the nature of the things.
Basically like rock formations. Completely inert, inorganic.
Besides functioning as a concentration point for Hueco Mundo's characteristic dense reiatsu clusters, there was nothing else worth noting about it.
So in the strictest sense, this was just a landmark. A point on the map.
But was it really only that?
Matsushita Yusuke stood in place and waited. About ten minutes passed. Then, carried by the faint rumbling sounds beginning to reach him from the distance, his expression gradually lit up.
Here they come.
He looked toward the source.
Moving through this completely empty and featureless wasteland was a pitch-black silhouette, nearly ten meters tall, advancing with slow and absolute certainty.
What exactly was that thing?
Words barely did it justice.
It had a terrifying height, but no arm-like limbs to speak of. Its entire body was encased in a pitch-black exterior. A white mask covered its face, bearing a long, narrow, pointed protrusion at the front — too sharp to call a nose.
No lips. The white, exposed jawline was visible in its entirety.
And on that face, only two eyes, irises the deep red of fresh blood.
Every aspect of it radiated something non-human and terrifying. A normal spirit body, just looking at it directly, would feel the fear settle in.
Even with mental preparation, Matsushita Yusuke felt the reaction.
Ah. A Menos Grande. The original power-scaling casualty of the later story.
As a manga, Bleach had the common ailment of long-form works: continuity inflation.
By the early story's own standards, a Menos was something that required special response teams or captain-class fighters to handle. There were accounts of captain and vice-captain level Shinigami being seriously wounded in Menos elimination missions, dying of their injuries.
Those accounts sound too much like folk legend to verify at this point...
But either way.
When the Menos made its first appearance, even Urahara gave it proper dramatic screentime.
The future heir to the Wandenreich, Uryu Ishida, broke out in a cold sweat. And Ichigo Kurosaki, who started the story already scaled well above most, trembled on the spot.
A Menos! Truly formidable!
Of course, in light of how the story developed, this could only really be attributed to Rukia having a limited frame of reference.
Meanwhile.
That mythology lasted roughly one arc.
After the Bount arc, the Hollow faction basically went off-screen entirely. No real presence to speak of.
Then in the Arrancar arc, the narrative focus shifted to the Club and its armies of Arrancar. So what did the Menos get?
Used as mob enemies. Spawned during the Karakura Town battle for the Visored to rack up style points.
Contributing to Aizen's experimental KPIs in Hueco Mundo. Serving as objectives for Shinigami and Quincy mission completion in the living world.
Every angle: tragic.
But that wasn't a reason for Matsushita Yusuke to feel sorry for one.
Wild Menos Grande encountered. Go, alt.
He raised his hand and pointed to the space beside him. A moment later, azure light flowed outward, weaving itself into a specific humanoid shape.
Similar height to Matsushita Yusuke. Entirely off-white, with bone-spike-like sharp protrusions extending from the joints at the elbows and knees.
Its face was covered by something mask-like, with a cross-shaped marking at the center, dividing it into four equal sections.
No visible facial features. No expression to read. To a normal observer it would simply look strange, with a certain weight of pressure behind it.
The most distinctive detail, though, was the tail.
Despite the humanoid outline, it had a long, slender tail, more like an animal's than a balancing structure. Highly compact and condensed. Likely usable as a weapon.
This was Matsushita Yusuke's alt. The thing he had been developing for half a year.
Its appearance hadn't changed in any obvious way. Its stats were a different matter entirely.
The alt had long since outgrown simply absorbing the output of low-tier Hollows. Hunting anything in a higher tier on its own made Yusuke a little uneasy. If it got swarmed, even this alt could be killed.
So the approach: careful, deliberate.
No passive parking. Active hunting with supervision.
The Forest of Menos had a straightforward name for a reason. It was currently the known area with the widest range and highest concentration of Menos-class activity.
Strictly speaking, this was a high-difficulty zone. But with the Yusuke alongside it, risk wasn't something to worry about.
Matsushita Yusuke kept his eyes fixed on the Menos in the distance, reached over, and gave the figure beside him a light pat on the shoulder. He leaned his head over and said it quietly.
"Hey, see that guy over there?"
He pointed.
"Go up there... and give him a couple smacks."