Chapter 239: I Need to Find You Someone
...
Roughly thirty minutes later.
Isshin Shiba hauled himself out of the crater looking thoroughly beaten up, his expression caught somewhere between impressed and genuinely shaken.
"You're something else... Captain Matsushita."
The fight itself hadn't been particularly complicated.
It was a training spar with communication as the premise, so neither side had gone all-out. That was the stated understanding, anyway. In practice, Isshin had been operating at something very close to his actual ceiling.
Which made sense. For most Shinigami, their Zanpakuto ability represented ninety percent or more of their fighting capacity. Take that off the table and you were essentially asking them to swim without arms. Anything short of giving up on the spot was already a respectable response.
Isshin had performed decently by that metric.
In the original story, he had gone up against a post-Hogyoku Aizen operating past his limits entirely. His performance there said something real about where his baseline sat. But honestly, a good chunk of that level had probably come from everything that happened after he moved to the living world. Between Urahara Kisuke, who had essentially invented half the tools available to modern Soul Society, and the handful of Quincies still active in the world, Isshin Shiba had fallen into one of the most information-dense environments imaginable.
Urahara on one side: the most celebrated inventor in Soul Society's history. On the other: the biological father of the current Quincy heir, who had famously looked at that heir and said, in a dialect so aggressively rural it could be considered a projectile, that he saw no talent and had no interest. A man whose idea of paternal affection was apparently torture-based training.
Regular exposure to that particular crowd had its effects.
With all that worked out, Matsushita Yusuke stood in place, looking at Isshin with a thoughtful expression.
"..."
The man wasn't bad, objectively. By any reasonable current comparison, he was clearly ahead of Byakuya next door. But that wasn't the bar Matsushita Yusuke had been measuring against.
The issue was simpler: the result hadn't triggered anything.
He had already run Isshin through the sequence four times to make sure there wasn't some threshold he'd missed.
Still nothing.
No reward.
Was the gap between them just too wide?
That explanation worked, technically. But it left Matsushita Yusuke with a problem: if the standard for rewards kept climbing, the only person who could reliably clear it was Yamamoto. And Yamamoto was harder to get to during the day without drawing the wrong kind of attention.
Which left midnight window-tapping as the primary path to growth.
That didn't feel right.
Matsushita Yusuke pressed his fingers to his temple.
"Captain Matsushita, you look like you're in a bad mood."
"Naturally. When the opponent doesn't give me a good workout, I end up disappointed."
That is absolutely a battle-maniac thing to say, and you should feel bad about it.
He caught himself and laughed it off before Isshin's expression could go fully uncomfortable. He clapped him on the shoulder.
"Don't take that seriously. Just talking. Think of it as a joke."
Saying it as a joke didn't mean hearing it as one, necessarily.
Isshin gave a response that wasn't quite listening and let his gaze drift slightly, a vaguely rueful look settling across his face.
He'd probably seen this result coming, if he was honest with himself.
Even the most relaxed version of Matsushita Yusuke was the captain of Squad 11 in the most literal sense. Simply holding that title credibly meant you weren't weak by any standard. Isshin had understood that going in.
"Going by current strength levels, I'd guess the only person who can actually hold their own against you is the Captain-Commander?"
Phrased like a compliment. Clearly also a genuine question. Isshin actually wanted an answer.
Matsushita Yusuke rubbed the back of his head and made a thoughtful sound.
If the question was purely about who could exchange blows with him, the list across all of Soul Society wasn't actually that short. But if the question was who had a real shot at taking him down with certainty, then yes, that list had exactly one name on it.
"Ha, it's not quite that extreme. Depends on the fight and the conditions. Fifty-fifty against the right opponent is probably where I'd put the realistic ideal."
"That's a very suspicious framing. Are you assuming the opponent is the Captain-Commander?"
Sharp instincts on this one.
"Alright, let's rephrase."
Isshin laughed and brushed the dust off his front, then looked up.
"Setting the Captain-Commander aside: who does Captain Matsushita think is the strongest person in the Gotei 13 right now?"
Matsushita Yusuke scratched the back of his head.
"Everyone except me?"
"That's not even an answer!"
"Ha. Forget it, doesn't matter."
The back and forth was doing something. The distance between them had been closing without either of them formally deciding on it.
Isshin had apparently decided to treat Matsushita Yusuke as a friend, because he started complaining about work.
Through the scattered details, Matsushita Yusuke pieced together a picture: administrative capability was a consistent weakness across the Gotei 13 at the captain level. Essentially a systemic problem with no real solution.
Nothing to be done about it.
"What I do is delegate most of it to someone else and handle just enough to look like I'm doing something. You could try the same."
Isshin considered that with a thoughtful nod.
Who exactly he planned to delegate to was Isshin's problem and not Matsushita Yusuke's concern.
Meanwhile.
Something else had been registering at the edge of Matsushita Yusuke's attention. Isshin was getting steadily more comfortable with the patrol work. Picking it up, learning the rhythms, starting to actually handle it.
That was the job. Making progress on it was expected.
But the specific progress mattered.
Patrols.
Once Isshin was fully comfortable with that role, Matsushita Yusuke could start coordinating with the boss on the next phase of the larger plan.
He worked at his chin with one hand, gaze drifting sideways.
Buddy, I'm not going to leave you out in the cold.
I should really start thinking about finding you someone.
Isshin apparently felt the intensity of the look, because he flinched slightly and turned with visible unease.
"Captain Matsushita?"
"Hm? Nothing. Don't worry about it."
Plenty of time for that. No need to rush.
The more pressing concern was the short-term path to growth, which was currently looking like it funneled straight back to Yamamoto. Irritating.
Then the world in front of him did something unusual.
It blurred. Faintly, but noticeably.
"...?"
He rubbed his eyes on instinct.
It was not a hallucination. Above Isshin Shiba's head, a small hovering prompt had appeared. And it was clickable.
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