Chapter 263: Lost Another Captain
Watching Aizen draw his blade, Matsushita Yusuke had a quiet, immediate reaction.
This is bad.
How had he let that slip his mind entirely.
To be clear: by any measure of strategic patience and general temperament, Aizen Sosuke was someone who could hold himself back. Remarkably so. The reason everyone had been blindsided when he finally made his move was precisely because he had spent decades showing no sign of it.
But that particular quality had exactly one exception.
Urahara Kisuke.
As a former researcher, Urahara's accomplishments were extraordinary by any measure. He had found his own path to understanding the Soul King's existence, like a fish that had leapt clear of the water and glimpsed the sky above. And then, having reached that point, having obtained a power that could genuinely break through the boundaries of what was possible, he had simply chosen to set it down. He had turned around, gone back into the water, and settled into a version of ordinary life.
To anyone else, that was a personal choice. A statement of will.
To Aizen Sosuke, it was something he could not tolerate.
A man who had walked ahead of him, and then deliberately chosen to stop. The person who had every capability to reach further and had looked at that capability and decided it wasn't worth pursuing.
Facing someone with power and no ambition to use it, the breakdown that came after Mugetsu had cut him in half was the clearest possible documentation of what Aizen actually felt.
I despise you, Urahara Kisuke.
You had to give it to him. Even when completely unraveling, he kept the vocabulary distinctive.
Ahem. Back to the matter.
Aizen's reaction to seeing Urahara right now was, fundamentally, exactly what you would expect from who he was: instinct layered on top of deeper purpose.
The instinct was old contempt. The deeper purpose was the Hogyoku.
That object was, in practical terms, the single thing Aizen's entire plan depended on. Without fusing with it completely, pushing past the Shinigami ceiling was not achievable through any other means. The half he currently held was not enough. His investigation of Urahara's whereabouts over the years had always carried the secondary objective of tracing where the other piece had gone.
And now Urahara was standing right there.
Of course Aizen was going to feel something.
It just put Matsushita Yusuke in an uncomfortable spot.
When the leader decides to improvise, what does the subordinate do?
After a brief internal debate, Matsushita Yusuke chose not to say anything. The reasoning was simple enough. Aizen, once he had committed to a direction, almost never changed course based on what someone else said. In that state, trying to talk him out of it would accomplish nothing useful and potentially create friction. Better to let him move, read the situation, and redirect as necessary. Working with Aizen's instincts rather than against them was a lesson hard-earned over many years.
If Matsushita Yusuke was staying quiet, Tosen certainly wasn't about to volunteer an opinion.
All three of them were ready to move.
And then Aizen hesitated.
"..."
He stood in silence. Thought. Then turned around and walked away without a word.
"Let's go."
Nobody knew what he had been thinking just then. Nobody except Matsushita Yusuke.
The boss didn't have to say anything. After this many years of close observation, reading Aizen's specific state through his posture and expression alone was manageable. The tight brow, the pressed line of the mouth: genuine internal conflict. He had been weighing it, actively and seriously.
"Aizen-sama, why are we..."
Tosen's question didn't finish. Aizen answered without looking back.
"The risk is too high. It's not worth it."
He wasn't being dishonest about the temptation. But he had made a calculation.
"The living world is unfamiliar ground. We don't know how much Urahara has prepared here. And if I'm being straightforward about it: given enough time to set things up, I don't have a confident answer for how I'd handle him."
The more he explained it, the more measured his voice became. Like he was organizing the reasoning for himself as much as for them.
"Beyond that, even if we got the Hogyoku, I'd need time to research it. If Urahara used that window to contact Yamamoto and close the information gap, we'd be the ones scrambling to react. That's not a position we want."
Logic compounding on logic.
"Moving early gives us nothing and introduces risk we don't need. Our advantage is staying embedded in the Gotei 13, advancing through our own methods, and accumulating position one piece at a time."
He seemed to have convinced himself entirely by the time he finished. His expression lifted, and he smiled, easy and clear.
"Let's leave it for today. Short-term opportunity isn't worth compromising a long-term arrangement. And this isn't the kind of ending I want."
If it could be helped.
Aizen glanced once in Urahara's direction, far away, across the distance.
He wanted to stand above him. Looking down at someone who had walked as far as he had and chosen complacency, from a height that made that choice look small.
His thoughts settled. He turned and walked forward.
Tosen held for a moment, then sheathed his blade and followed.
That left Matsushita Yusuke.
He looked out toward Isshin, who was on his feet now, expression shifting from bewilderment into something resolving and certain.
He smiled quietly and exhaled.
The matchmaking mission was, for this phase, complete. Getting the two of them together and achieving the three-way balance inside Masaki: that was the milestone. Ichigo Kurosaki's existence was now essentially settled.
Soul King, old man. I kept your script intact. What's my reward?
He said that to no one. He and the Soul King had never had any actual interaction to speak of, and this was not the moment to start.
What mattered was the practical question: phase complete, what came next? How to maximize the return on everything that was now in motion? What was the next move?
Matsushita Yusuke didn't feel particularly pressed about it. He had time. Plenty of it. The main story was still a long way off.
Step by step. Piece by piece. Let things develop and collect at the right moment.
Rushing the reveal, exposing things prematurely: the only person that hurt was the person who had been doing the arranging.
Aizen had, for all his complexity, just demonstrated something worth noting: he had felt the pull, recognized the temptation, and deliberately chosen not to act on it. That took a particular kind of discipline, and watching it in practice was useful in its own right.
Following in someone capable's footsteps had its advantages. Even now, Aizen was still showing Matsushita Yusuke things worth learning.
He fell in behind Aizen and stepped through the Garganta, taking one last look at the living world's grey and overcast night sky as it closed behind him.
This place was too far away from him right now. But just a little more time.
Because when the next-next chapter of the story finally arrived, this was going to be the final battlefield.
Let's go.
The three returned to Soul Society and quietly resumed their respective posts. Some days passed without incident.
Then:
"The Captain-Commander requests your presence."
Matsushita Yusuke looked up at the familiar face of Sasakibe Chojiro standing in the doorway and understood immediately. He tidied himself up without rushing and followed.
Exactly as expected.
He was led to Squad 1's meeting room. He pushed the door open and found several familiar faces waiting.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni in the head position. Kyoraku Shunsui and Ukitake Jushiro to either side. And behind them, Shiba Kaien was also present.
Heads turned as he entered.
"Captain Matsushita is here."
For some reason, Matsushita Yusuke had the distinct impression that whatever tension had been sitting in the room had eased slightly the moment he walked in.
He didn't think too hard about it. He moved forward, acknowledged everyone with a nod, and found a seat in a corner.
A meeting. The joy of captaincy.
Tea first, then the agenda. Squad 1's tribute-grade leaves were consistently good. Paying for this quality himself would cost something.
He picked up the bamboo cup in front of him, took a couple of unhurried sips, and then became aware that something was wrong.
He set the cup down and glanced sideways.
Every person in the room was looking at him.
"...???"
Shiba Kaien, sitting beside him, leaned in and lowered his voice.
"Captain Matsushita. Up front. That's not your seat."
Seating.
Simple concept on the surface. Considerably more nuanced in the Gotei 13. In a setting that ran on feudal social logic, the physical position you occupied at any formal gathering carried its own precise language. Only Yamamoto's closest allies, his most trusted captains, the people he considered genuinely indispensable, sat near him.
Why is the old man suddenly pulling me closer?
The complaint formed. Then he thought about it. Given his current position in terms of actual strength, he was probably one of the few people in the Gotei 13 right now who could legitimately be called formidable in absolute terms.
Might as well take the compliment.
He picked up his cup and moved, settling next to Ukitake, and the white-haired captain gently caught his sleeve with a smile and a light cough.
"Captain Matsushita. Just a little further over."
He looked where Ukitake was pointing.
First seat to Yamamoto's right.
That's too close. He was genuinely a little nervous.
There was always the specific anxiety of sitting within immediate arm's reach of someone who had punched him into the ground and could theoretically do it again before he could react.
"Matsushita. Come here."
Yamamoto had spoken. There was no reasonable way to refuse this now.
He exhaled quietly and moved into position.
"So. What's the situation today?"
"Something serious."
Yamamoto watched him settle, released a breath of his own, and said with a gravity that matched the weight of what came next:
"Isshin Shiba has gone missing."
That's the one. There it is.
He had worked out this much was coming the moment they stepped back through to Soul Society.
As a captain-level figure, being absent from your post initially read as dereliction: someone taking unauthorized leave. The rest of the squad would cover it internally for a while. Nobody wanted to escalate a squad's internal situation to outside involvement before they had to.
So the moment they had actually confirmed Isshin was genuinely gone:
"Roughly a week ago," Yamamoto said.
"We learned the approximate timeframe from Squad 10's members and checked the places he frequented. There's no trace of him anywhere."
He had vanished completely.
Everyone in the room knew that was impossible. Especially Matsushita Yusuke.
He furrowed his brow thoughtfully, paused for a moment, and said:
"A week ago? To be honest, the last time I saw him was about two weeks back."
Two weeks. The joint patrol period.
"We had contact through the joint patrol assignment, but lately I genuinely haven't seen him. Isshin Shiba is missing?"
Yamamoto's expression remained heavy as he nodded.
"You haven't seen him either. This is becoming difficult. We've essentially lost all information on his whereabouts."
Missing said something different from defeated. At least a defeat left traces. Right now there was nothing: no sign of where Isshin was, no way to confirm whether he was alive.
And that was precisely the effect Aizen had designed.
When they had returned from the living world, Matsushita Yusuke had considered reporting the incident under his own name, as a sudden ambush during patrol. Aizen had overruled it.
"Don't take the blame onto yourself. Every question Yamamoto asks costs us energy building and maintaining false answers. Better to release entirely wrong information from the start and let them follow the wrong trail than to construct a story that gets interrogated."
Kyoka Suigetsu had done the rest: a convincing illusion of Isshin going about normal activity for several more days, then nothing. No clear stopping point. No obvious incident.
The Gotei 13 was currently running in circles and getting nowhere.
Illusions really were useful.
Matsushita Yusuke watched Yamamoto working through the frustration of it with visible difficulty.
Lost another captain. How does this keep happening.