Chapter 256: Like Father, Like Son
And that was exactly why people said the son took after the father.
Is that really all you know how to do?
Swinging Getsuga Tensho over and over with your eyes closed. No wonder so many of the old veteran captains looked at Ichigo Kurosaki sideways during the Thousand-Year Blood War arc. Walking around announcing yourself to the entire battlefield. Who wouldn't know your moves with that kind of telegraphing?
Of course, setting the commentary aside, Isshin Shiba's execution right now was genuinely different from his son's in a number of real ways.
Because Matsushita Yusuke could feel exactly where the difference was.
Reiatsu...
Before the thought could fully settle, both fighters slammed into each other.
The red reiatsu marking the Hollow alt flickered in the haze, flaring bright and vivid, like a star appearing suddenly in the dark.
Then, right behind it.
The pale golden light surged forward like a wave and swallowed the red entirely, covering it completely.
Isshin's face was calm as he swung. A clean, heavy cut.
The space around the blade seemed to collapse toward it.
The Hollow alt had already started an evasive motion, but even so, the force caught it and dragged the movement sideways. It went tumbling, off-balance, in a way that made it look like it had thrown itself into the blade's path.
Contact.
The sound of it was wrong. A blade hitting a body should have sounded one way. This sounded more like two hard objects meeting at high speed.
The pale golden current condensed into a narrow band and drove straight through the Hollow alt's left shoulder.
Cut through.
On its own, that might have been unremarkable.
But the Hollow alt's body immediately began shaking in ways that weren't deliberate. Like it had lost control over the affected parts. Small tremors. Staggering. And from the wound in the left shoulder, a spray of blood mist erupted outward.
Matsushita Yusuke's eyebrow rose slightly.
Of everyone present, nobody understood the Hollow alt's capabilities better than him. Which was why he had been fairly certain, up to this moment, that Isshin's current reiatsu level simply wasn't enough to damage it.
That had turned out to be wrong.
He watched the visible gash appear. Watched the line of it run from chest through to back, cutting through almost the entire left shoulder. And then the answer clicked.
"I see."
The moment the words left his mouth, Aizen nearby turned toward him with a look that carried a faint smile and asked:
"You've worked it out too?"
Matsushita Yusuke scratched the side of his mouth. His expression was thoughtful, edging toward impressed.
"I just didn't expect to actually see something that should only exist in theory."
Tosen, standing with them, felt completely left behind. Whatever frequency this conversation was operating on, he wasn't on it.
What was he supposed to say here? Maybe just redirect to something else?
Matsushita Yusuke glanced at him with a slightly teasing look, then said:
"A full Zanpakuto release is fundamentally an excavation of power. Digging up what's inside. Which means Bankai should produce a sharp spike in reiatsu. That's the baseline rule. A law of this world, in its own way."
A pause.
"So the question is: can Isshin Shiba bypass that rule?"
Matsushita Yusuke had genuinely been uncertain about this before. But now, having watched the whole thing with his own eyes, he was sure.
The rules still applied to Isshin. He hadn't escaped them.
"That means the reiatsu didn't disappear."
He raised his right hand and pointed across the distance toward Isshin.
His gaze locked onto the flame curling around Isshin's body. His expression sharpened with the specific quality of someone who had just found something genuinely interesting to study.
"It just changed form. Externalized. Distributed outside his body rather than inside it."
"What does that mean?"
Tosen, clearly not on the same page, asked the straightforward question.
Fair enough. Matsushita Yusuke could use the explanation to organize his own thinking anyway.
"Simply put: Isshin's Bankai converts his released reiatsu into an external form, condensed and held outside his body rather than within it."
Which meant.
"He can draw on it at will, adjusting and deploying it in short bursts. Pull large amounts at a moment's notice, concentrate it, and turn it into the sharpest attack available at that instant."
That clarified things considerably.
Getsuga Tensho was always a technique built on compressing reishi at high density and releasing it all at once through the swing. In terms of mechanics, it was actually closer to how Quincies used reishi than how most Shinigami did. Ichigo Kurosaki was naturally talented at it because of his bloodline. That much had always been obvious.
But Isshin?
Matsushita Yusuke thought he had his answer now.
"That's why Isshin's Bankai can't activate when his condition isn't right."
He exhaled quietly, genuinely struck by the elegance of it.
The reason was simple once you saw it.
"Holding your reiatsu in external storage requires constant, precise mental focus. It's like strapping several highly volatile items to your outside and needing to keep them perfectly stable. You can't afford to slip."
Tosen's mouth opened slightly with a questioning expression.
"But why go to all that trouble?"
"To maximize his control over output."
With the core logic settled, the rest followed naturally.
"The most obvious case is his Getsuga Tensho. Gathering a massive amount of reiatsu in an instant, compressing it, releasing it all at once. That's technically achievable through training. But it's not efficient."
Consider instead.
"Think about what Engetsu's Shikai does."
With that prompt, Tosen made the connection.
"You mean... because the Shikai ability involves attached, adhesive flame, the Bankai extends that principle?"
"Roughly, yes. Though that's a broad reading and not a precise explanation. You have to take it further."
"All the released reiatsu held externally also creates a layer of defense. And because the reiatsu output doesn't register as a clean detectable change, it's difficult for an opponent to read the timing or scale of attacks."
In summary: the approach had some deceptive qualities built into it.
But it wasn't anything that made the situation feel unmanageable.
There was also an obvious drawback.
"It won't last long."
Aizen added this in a measured tone.
"Reiatsu stored outside the body, no matter how carefully managed, will dissipate. You can minimize the waste, but you can't eliminate it."
Which meant.
Kouen Engetsu had a short operational window. The longer it ran, the more it burned through what Isshin had stored. Exactly what the visual suggested: the flame wrapped around him would consume itself over time.
"Sounds like... kind of a weak form, honestly."
Tosen said this, and the other two looked at him at almost exactly the same moment.
Neither of them said anything. But the quality of silence they produced communicated a fairly direct message.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
"Do you actually think a release form that looks awkward and disadvantaged exists just to inconvenience its user?"
Faced with Matsushita Yusuke's question, Tosen opened his mouth. Then struggled to find the words. The gap in understanding between them was simply too wide.
"Then... what is it for?"
"To push out far more power than would otherwise be available."
Externalized reiatsu could be called on and adjusted at will. And beyond that, it could all be activated simultaneously, at full intensity, in a single coordinated moment.
In short.
"This is a specialized release built for short windows, extreme output, and high-intensity combat. Isshin is a lot more straightforward than he looks."
Someone delicate wouldn't have a Bankai like this. Power reflected character, and character reflected power. This form said something real about the kind of person who carried it.
Isshin Shiba, at his core, was someone who burned hot and had no particular objection to setting himself on fire to win.
The brief exchange between them caught up to the fight in front of them.
The Hollow alt was retreating fast, pressing its right hand against the wound on its shoulder, trying to create distance.
"Getsuga Tensho!"
A shout that reminded you of a certain blond young man in later years. Isshin came forward again, charging after it.
And as he shouted, the reiatsu wrapped around him outside began to stir, building toward another surge.
Matsushita Yusuke's assessment had always been correct: these two really were the same person with a generation between them.
The column of blade-light erupted upward and came down, and alongside the spray of blood, the Hollow alt took another hit.
This one found the right wrist. The impact cut cleanly. The hand separated from the arm in an instant and went spinning away with the blood.
Before it had only broken through. Now it was cutting clean.
That was Getsuga Tensho's real difficulty to deal with. Looking at it from the outside, hearing the same name called, you couldn't tell from the appearance or the sound that two consecutive uses were operating at completely different scales. There was no obvious tell.
And there was something else worth noting.
You couldn't dodge it.
Matsushita Yusuke's eyebrow twitched as he watched. He raised a hand and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
He hadn't paid much attention to this detail watching the anime and manga, but thinking back, Ichigo's Getsuga Tensho almost never got dodged either.
From a storytelling angle, you could argue that taking a hit made for a better scene than watching someone sidestep.
Watching it in person, though, made the reason obvious.
The speed of the attack was genuinely extreme. And Isshin's technique was several levels beyond his son's in terms of precision and refinement. His execution was sharp in ways that made the attack deliberately difficult to predict.
Fast, penetrating, loaded with enormous amounts of reiatsu.
All of that together. The result was a technique that fully deserved its place as a signature move passed down through a lineage.
It was genuinely difficult to deal with.
"Matsushita-kun, do you need to step in?"
Tosen's voice, beside him.
Matsushita Yusuke considered briefly, then smiled and shook his head.
No. Because.
"We're just getting started."
The Hollow alt was injured and missing a hand. Isshin was pressing forward, Zanpakuto raised, the reiatsu around him building soundlessly for another attack. The pursuit was relentless.
Then, the Hollow alt, which had been running, did something unexpected.
It planted one foot hard into the ground in front of it.
The pivot was instant. Like a running animal that had locked its legs and reversed direction at full speed. Dust flew outward. Its body whipped around to face front.
The right arm pulled back, short and sharp. A brief, coiled wind-up.
And in the next moment, the flesh and blood restructured themselves. Bone and muscle rebuilt quickly, and a complete right hand reappeared without any sound.
Feigning weakness to set up a reversal. That was a strategy too.
A current of blood-red reiatsu condensed around the recovered hand. The blood that had been spraying outward gathered itself, pulled together, and was gripped.
At this range, there was no time to set up a defense.
The Hollow alt drove into the space directly in front of Isshin and closed its hand.
Blood Burst.
The red light expanded and contracted in an instant.
A sudden and complete loss of gravity hit all three observers simultaneously, and each of them responded differently.
Tosen had the worst of it. He nearly stumbled completely off his feet, and it was only Matsushita Yusuke's hand catching his arm that kept him upright.
Matsushita Yusuke himself bent his knees slightly and planted his stance in a broad, rough brace.
"..."
"Thank you."
"Don't worry about it. Just keep your footing after this."
For Matsushita Yusuke, being steadied by something like this was a trivial event. He even found a moment to glance sideways.
Aizen was standing exactly where he had been. Rooted. Completely unaffected in appearance. But Matsushita Yusuke could feel it: the man was running his reiatsu as a kind of anchor, forming it into something like spikes pressed downward to hold himself in place.
Not the most practical solution. But compared to the blunter options available, it was the one that required the least undignified movement.
For someone who cared about his image, it was probably the only acceptable choice.
Going to all that trouble for appearances.
Matsushita Yusuke pulled his attention back outward, looking toward the distance.
After the weightlessness came the detonation. A spray of blood mist. Two figures obscured inside it, shapes unclear.
So. After all of that.
What was left standing?