Chapter 236: Wrapped Up for Now
The words were barely out before the fourth reishi weapon collapsed and scattered in the air. At the same moment, Ryujin Jakka grew visibly unstable in Yamamoto's grip, the flames wrapped around it guttering and dying out.
"..."
The change in the blade's condition made Yamamoto's expression harden slightly.
Before he could do anything with that reaction, Matsushita Yusuke's fifth strike was already coming in, landing flush against the flat of the blade.
Clang!
Both weapons shattered at the same instant, fragments scattering in every direction.
Yamamoto stood with his brow drawn tight, staring at Matsushita Yusuke.
His expression right now was genuinely complicated. Because through direct physical contact, he could say with certainty: whatever ability this person was using, it was a completely different form from the one belonging to the attacker.
The erosion efficiency of the reishi was different. The dismantling process ran in a completely different direction.
Like two canals flowing in opposite courses that somehow both emptied into the same sea. That was the contradiction Matsushita Yusuke was producing in him right now. A deep, specific sense of wrongness.
Taken at face value, judging purely from results and from what Yamamoto could see in front of him, this should be the attacker's technique. But the physical impression it left on him was telling him something else entirely: this was a different person's method.
How to judge it. How to think about it. What to do next.
The questions surfaced one after another, and for the first time in what might have been several hundred years, Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni found himself actually uncertain. Actually conflicted.
It had been that long since anything had made him feel this way.
Matsushita Yusuke's actions were getting inside Yamamoto's head. His composure was cracking, his movements were distorted, and his overall performance was suffering for it.
And that was exactly the opening Matsushita Yusuke had been building toward.
The moment the weapons shattered and the air was full of drifting fragments, Matsushita Yusuke's body flashed forward, punching straight through the scattered reishi turbulence and closing to point-blank range in an instant.
This close?!
Yamamoto snapped back to the moment, locked his jaw, and threw a punch.
Not a big move. His expression said this was emergency damage control, a fast counter to buy time rather than a finishing blow. Against a typical opponent it would have been more than enough.
But this wasn't a typical situation.
Matsushita Yusuke had spent the entire fight building to this exact moment. He had laid out every piece of groundwork with exactly this second in mind. Even if Yamamoto wanted to act, the simple truth was that he was too late.
Matsushita Yusuke tilted his head to the side. The punch skimmed past his cheek and slammed into empty air beside him with a howl of compressed displacement.
The air itself rang from the force of it.
But Matsushita Yusuke didn't so much as flinch. His expression stayed blank. He just raised his right hand, wound it back, and put his fist directly into the old man's face.
A full-rotation hook, and it landed clean.
Yamamoto had no way to stop it. His entire body lifted off the ground and flew, crashing down thirty meters away.
"Captain-Commander!"
Sasakibe Chojiro's voice came out all wrong.
In several hundred years, he had never seen Yamamoto look like this. Not once. Not even during the blood war a thousand years ago, where even surrounded, even in genuine danger, the old man had always held the absolute bearing of someone at the top of everything and cut down every enemy around him regardless.
And now he had been sent flying by a punch. And there was a sound of pain. An actual, audible sound.
It was so contrary to everything Sasakibe knew that his mind briefly rejected the input entirely.
He had not just seen Yamamoto knocked back. He was clearly delirious. Some kind of sensory malfunction. Yamamoto was invincible.
He got himself back together quickly after that.
Sasakibe shouted, snapping the stunned members around him into motion, and surged forward himself, reiatsu blazing, moving to get between the two of them.
What he did not expect was that Matsushita Yusuke had already stepped back.
Several paces back. Hands slightly raised, palms open. The universal signal for not a threat.
"..."
Sasakibe held his ground and watched, every nerve pulled tight.
Something was strange. Matsushita Yusuke looked the same as he always had, stood the same way, but there was something about him that Sasakibe couldn't identify. A faint sense of unfamiliarity, something that didn't quite line up with the person he knew.
It was gone before he could catch it. The impression arrived and vanished in the same breath, like a flicker behind glass.
Yamamoto might have been able to read it. Sasakibe couldn't.
A cough came from behind him.
Sasakibe turned.
"Captain-Commander!"
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni pushed himself upright, already waving off any attempt to help him.
The mark of the punch was still fresh on his face. From cheekbone to jaw, the skin had taken on a vivid, searing outline, like a brand pressed in a wide slow arc.
A sight not witnessed in a very long time.
But Yamamoto showed no emotional reaction. He actively held back the squad members who had started moving.
"Sasakibe. Stand down."
"But Captain-Commander, you're in no condition to-"
"I won't say it twice. Stand down."
A thousand years of working together, and Yamamoto's authority had never once wavered. Sasakibe's lips pressed thin. He stepped back without another word.
With the interference cleared, the two of them faced each other again. A short silence settled.
When Yamamoto finally broke it, his voice carried a weight that wasn't irritation exactly, but wasn't far from it either.
"My judgment was wrong. I apologize... Captain Matsushita."
The two techniques had points of similarity. But the fundamental nature of each was different. Once Yamamoto accepted that, pursuing this particular line became impossible. He wasn't going to press a wrongful accusation, especially not against someone who had become a genuine pillar of the Gotei 13.
Apologizing like this was not a small thing for someone of Yamamoto's stature. It cost him something real.
But the moment he framed it from Soul Society's perspective rather than his own, the calculation was simple. If an apology was all it took to resolve this cleanly, then he would give one without hesitation.
Matsushita Yusuke accepted it without making a production of it.
"Honestly I'm fine, and if you're willing to say sorry I don't have any complaint about this... does that mean I can head home now?"
There was something about the delivery that made you want to hit him.
He caught himself immediately and swapped to a more serious expression.
"Now that I'm off the suspect list, would it be alright to ask what actually happened tonight? What exactly had you on this level of alert?"
He looked between the two of them. Reading the atmosphere, he raised both hands slightly in a clarifying gesture.
"I want to be upfront: I'm asking because I feel like I should, as someone who's part of the Gotei 13. But if this isn't something you can share, pretend I never said it."
Whether to tell him was ultimately Yamamoto's call to make.
Sasakibe had already dismissed the extra personnel. With Yamamoto's verdict delivered, Matsushita Yusuke was no longer a suspect. He couldn't be treated as a threat.
What came next, whether to bring him into this or not, was Yamamoto's decision alone.
"You. Come with me."
There it was.
Another kind of concession.
Matsushita Yusuke's expression stayed easy. Inside, he let out a long, quiet breath of relief.
That's exactly what I was hoping for.
Because if he wasn't in the room, how was he supposed to steer the investigation in the right direction? Getting inside the tent was the whole point.
Having the person you're looking for join your search party. Classic.
Of course, that was just one small piece of the larger picture. What Matsushita Yusuke was really thinking about right now were the rewards from two back-to-back boss encounters.
The first fight had been a real result. Landing a genuine hit on Yamamoto wasn't nothing.
The second one was something else entirely.
He had punched Yamamoto hard enough to get an apology out of him.
That had to count for something. The System's judgment on what constituted a reward-worthy event had always been its own logic, but this felt like a reasonable bet.
Either way, he'd know soon enough. He'd been looking forward to getting home, a shower, and cracking that open. But work wasn't done yet, so that would have to wait.
"Does this mean I'm joining the investigation?"
Yamamoto paused visibly before answering.
"I think you have relevant experience. That shouldn't go to waste. You may be able to help us break through some of the deadlock."
That's the right call.
"Understood. I'll do what I can."
The three of them left Squad 9's barracks together and made their way back to Squad 1.
On the way, Sasakibe offered to treat Yamamoto's injury. The old man refused, with considerable stubbornness.
"This is something I brought on myself through faulty judgment. No need to cover it up. Leave it."
Commanding line. But Yamamoto's face twitched every few steps with what was clearly significant pain, making the whole declaration considerably harder to take seriously.
Watching this, even Matsushita Yusuke found himself briefly wondering if he had gone too hard.
Then again.
He had come one grip away from having his skull compressed. So honestly, they were probably about even. Maybe.
Back at Squad 1's headquarters, Matsushita Yusuke was caught up on the situation through a summary of the available intelligence. He worked through it, rubbing his chin, and put together his own version.
"Right. So what we're looking at is a group of unknown origin who came after the Captain-Commander."
Sasakibe, listening from the side, added a correction on reflex.
"Three individuals. That's the confirmed number."
The specificity was completely unexplained. But this was not the moment to question administrative instincts.
"Okay. Three unknown individuals targeting the Captain-Commander. First incident was several decades ago. The most recent was tonight."
And between those two events.
"The one doing the actual fighting has been developing at a rate that's genuinely hard to explain. Fast enough to reach the point of landing an actual hit on you. Is that right?"
Sasakibe's lips moved slightly. He said, very quietly:
"This is a serious matter..."
Sasakibe. Quiet.
Yamamoto slowly closed his eyes. He let out a breath and said, with the particular exhaustion of someone stating a problem they don't have a good answer to:
"I still don't have a precise read on that person's strength. But based on how the ability presented itself, I believe they have more than one Zanpakuto."
A pause. He looked at Matsushita Yusuke directly.
"That's why you were the first person we looked at."
So they had ruled out the right answer from the start of the investigation.
Wonderful.
"Understood. Is there anything specific I can do to help?"
Yamamoto considered, then said:
"Two things."
First.
"Starting tomorrow, I'd like you to join the search operation. Your strength is considerable, and working alongside the others would improve our chances."
Second.
"I'd like you to demonstrate that reishi dismantling ability to the other captains."
Yamamoto seemed to pick over his words here, taking a moment before he continued.
"That particular form of power is deeply unexpected. Even I was caught off guard when I had no prior knowledge of it. I'd like the others to at least be aware of it, so that even if they can't immediately counter it, they won't be completely at a loss."
Team training, essentially. A blunt approach, but not a bad one from a command perspective. The captains would take the bruising, and Yamamoto would take whatever complaints followed.
And the Club would take the upside.
Matsushita Yusuke thought it over and agreed.
"No objection from me."
He watched Yamamoto noticeably exhale.
"Good. That's a real help... Captain Matsushita."
"Just doing my part. Dinner's on you sometime."
A few more back-and-forths, and the night's business was officially wrapped up.
"That's enough for tonight. Go get some rest."
"Good night, then... both of you."
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