Chapter 246: What Suits You
Skip the probing.
Both of them already had a clear enough read on the other. When neither side was weak, careful testing accomplished nothing. They went straight at each other.
Both reached for their most capable Kido simultaneously, by unspoken agreement.
In front of Aizen, the reiatsu mass began shifting. The pale blue light contracted at a steady rhythm, breath by breath, transitioning silently into a concentrated, internal darkness. The already highly compressed field underwent a second pass, pulling tighter, and in an instant took a clean, angular shape.
A miniaturized Kurohitsugi, roughly the size of a fist, formed without a sound.
Matsushita Yusuke watched the whole sequence and couldn't help feeling a twinge of something.
There was no getting around it. Experience was experience.
The construction speed is completely out of my reach.
Aizen's command of Kurohitsugi had reached a level that was genuinely difficult to categorize. Even at his current tier, Matsushita Yusuke couldn't match the efficiency. The steps were identical. The process was the same. But producing the same result required meaningfully more time.
Roughly a quarter faster than me.
Both of them had skipped the incantation entirely and stripped the process down as far as it would go. The gap was still visible.
Given that their raw reiatsu was now essentially level, the remaining variable was probably just one thing.
Kido proficiency.
He glanced inward at his panel.
Kido at 98. By his own reckoning, almost no one in Soul Society was ahead of him on that number.
Two points of difference is producing this kind of gap?
Sobering. But not unreasonable. He knew better than anyone how much each individual point represented at this end of the range.
For now, analyzing it further served no purpose.
His hands didn't stop while his thoughts moved.
Because his approach to this particular exchange had been different from the start. He had found a small opening in the format and walked through it.
What was moving in front of Matsushita Yusuke was also darkening reiatsu, the same transition as Aizen's. But the process looked nothing like his.
Rather than condensing into a fixed angular shape, Matsushita Yusuke's version stayed fluid. Under Aizen's watch it gathered and thickened into something like a slow viscous current, skipping the step of taking a defined form entirely.
No shape-locking process meant the speed came out ahead. His modified version was finished before Aizen's miniature Kurohitsugi.
Aizen let out a quiet sound of amusement after a brief standoff.
"I've been wanting to say this for a while, but now is as good a time as any. Matsushita-kun, does what you have there actually qualify as Kurohitsugi?"
Matsushita Yusuke didn't react to the jab at all.
"Real power doesn't need a fixed form. If it works, it works, Aizen-sensei."
Pleasantries exchanged.
Both of them put on their working expressions at the same time.
Now.
Two dark reiatsu flows collided.
Like an ocean freighter running into a deep underwater current. Both were the same color, yet there was no mixing. No blending. A clean line between them, distinct all the way through.
A hard separation. The most accurate description available for what was in front of them.
Both expressions tightened. A brief standoff. Then the balance began shifting.
Aizen's Kurohitsugi was moving forward.
"..."
The dark flowing mass representing Matsushita Yusuke's technique was retreating, point by point, like a tide being pushed back.
A clear outcome?
Not quite to that level.
As expected, an unformed structure hits differently from a complete one.
The short-term standoff had confirmed the output. The longer-term retreat exposed the limitation. But none of that meant the concept was wrong. If anything, it pointed exactly toward where development should go next.
As Aizen's Kurohitsugi pushed the last of his reiatsu flow out and the smile on Aizen's face deepened, he said:
"What are you going to do, Matsushita-kun? If this keeps going, you only have one outcome available."
"Looking at it right now, you're not wrong about that."
A quiet exhale.
Facing something that could fairly be described as a wall with no way through it, Matsushita Yusuke shifted his right hand's position and snapped his fingers.
Thwap.
"Itto Kaso: Modified."
The fluid mass in front of him changed immediately.
The dark flowing material twisted and jumped, and in the next instant a vivid yellow light burst through it. Spiraling heat and light crossed each other, converging, locking together, compressing into a small rotating ball of fire.
The weakness in Matsushita Yusuke's Kurohitsugi: Modified was real, and Aizen had correctly identified it. In a straight confrontational contest it couldn't hold its own.
But that wasn't the point.
What mattered was never what was strongest. What mattered was what worked for you specifically.
That was the thought.
A snap of the fingers, and with the rising flicker of dim firelight, a ball of intense heat climbed and spread outward in every direction, completely surrounding Aizen's Kurohitsugi and wrapping it from all sides.
Aizen's Kido was, genuinely, the kind of thing you couldn't just outrun or outscale. But through years of accumulation and a different kind of study, Matsushita Yusuke had arrived at something that was specifically his own.
Complete fluency across Kido as a system. Not the best version of any one technique. The full range of how they connected to each other.
As his own Kurohitsugi caught fire, the shifting glow played across half of Aizen's face.
No one could read what was underneath. But Matsushita Yusuke kept his eyes fixed on the corner of Aizen's mouth, watching until it lifted, settling into something that looked unmistakably like genuine satisfaction.
"I see. Matsushita-kun as always. The most unpredictable Shinigami in any room, at any time. Even I have to acknowledge it. That kind of thinking, that kind of design, is genuinely something."
He had received a compliment.
That was worth something. But what registered more, underneath the satisfaction, was a specific feeling about Kido.
The value of exchanging ideas with someone at this level was exactly this: through the actual collision, the gaps became visible. Then you could address those gaps precisely.
The thoughts continued rising and settling in Matsushita Yusuke's head.
Then he noticed something.
Aizen was still smiling.
"Matsushita-kun. You don't actually think that was all my Kurohitsugi had to offer?"
If you're enjoying the story, toss a Power Stone or drop a review — it helps more than you'd think.
Advance chapters → patreon.com/Eatinpieces