Chapter 266: Hitsugaya-kun, Nice to Meet You
Under normal circumstances, Matsushita Yusuke would have kept the complaint strictly internal.
But this was not normal circumstances.
Because if he didn't push back at least a little, the work was genuinely just going to land on him.
"Aizen-sensei. When exactly are you planning to make your move?"
Faced with the direct question from one of his own, Aizen took a moment to consider it, reaching up with his right hand to rub his chin lightly.
"Hmm. The timing isn't right yet."
Matsushita Yusuke couldn't help rolling his eyes.
Though in fairness, that was a genuine answer. Aizen Sosuke had absolutely no reason to abandon a plan he had been building for years over something so minor.
In the original story, Aizen Sosuke had operated on patience as a core principle -- keeping his head down, accumulating position one piece at a time, until Kuchiki Rukia appeared carrying the Hogyoku and gave him the opening he needed. No certainty, no action. That kind of restraint was its own form of deep discipline.
And yet, from where Matsushita Yusuke now stood, the whole sequence had started looking like something worth examining more carefully.
Urahara Kisuke had half the Hogyoku in his possession and knew Aizen wanted it. The rational move, if he was simply trying to keep it out of Aizen's hands, would have been to hide it somewhere completely inaccessible.
Instead, he had quietly embedded it inside Kuchiki Rukia's body.
Then let her walk straight back into Soul Society.
Which was strange. By any measure of strategic logic, Urahara understood what the Hogyoku represented. He couldn't not know. And yet he had made that specific choice anyway. Which raised a question.
Was Urahara fishing?
Deliberately dangling the Hogyoku to draw Aizen out into the open?
The thought spread outward. Matsushita Yusuke's brow pulled together slightly as he followed the thread to its natural conclusion.
If that was the play, then the question became: what was Urahara's confidence built on? He hadn't shown any meaningful increase in raw combat ability over all these years. Most of his energy had gone into research. Building a few Soul King substitutes on the side.
So where did the nerve come from?
Matsushita Yusuke made a sound under his breath, and the image of a certain spiky-haired teenager surfaced in his mind.
There was one possible answer. That after making contact with Ichigo Kurosaki, Urahara had recognized exactly what kind of absurd ceiling that kid carried -- the single most broken set of numbers in three worlds -- and had recalibrated everything accordingly. That recognition alone could have been enough to shift his entire risk calculation.
It actually tracked.
Because without that explanation, Matsushita Yusuke genuinely couldn't account for Urahara's behavior. Nothing else added up.
The thought spiral ran its course. When Matsushita Yusuke finally surfaced, he noticed that both Aizen and Tosen were staring at him.
Both of them looked mildly concerned.
"Are you alright, Matsushita-kun? Your expression just now was a little off."
"Is something wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"
He shook his head quickly and used a brief cough as cover to collect himself.
When he looked up again, the familiar easy smile was back.
"Nothing major. Just remembered something I'd overlooked at work. Easily handled. Don't worry about it."
The specifics around Urahara were beyond what he could pin down with any confidence right now. Nothing concrete enough to act on. So he filed it under pending and let it sit.
The man was in the living world. Whatever he was actually up to, there was no way to know from here. And before that question answered itself, the only thing Matsushita Yusuke needed to do was keep building his own strength.
The original story made that much clear enough.
If you could put Aizen down in one swing from the start, skipping the Hueco Mundo arc entirely wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Ahem. Back to the point.
With the extended mental tangent resolved, Matsushita Yusuke had his direction set: before Ichigo Kurosaki started developing in earnest, before the main story kicked into motion, get his own level to a point where he could handle whatever came next.
How much effort that was going to cost was a separate problem.
The Club's internal meeting wrapped up. As Matsushita Yusuke moved to leave, Aizen called him back and had one more item to cover.
"Matsushita-kun, there are a few things I'd like to confirm with you about the Squad 10 side of things."
Aizen had something to discuss?
Mildly curious, Matsushita Yusuke stayed.
The request turned out to be simple enough. Aizen was asking him to provide patrol and defensive layout maps for the coming years.
Squad 10's full designation was the Imperial Guard.
As a combat-oriented squad, its responsibilities included regular patrol circuits of the Seireitei alongside its standard defensive duties, along with responsibility for designing the specific patrol route maps. As acting captain, Matsushita Yusuke would naturally be handling those documents in the period ahead.
What did Aizen want them for?
Rather than guess, he asked directly.
Aizen crossed his arms, looked sideways for a moment, and then said:
"I want to find opportunities to make contact with the noble families inside the organization."
Getting a candid answer from Aizen was never a small thing. And once Matsushita Yusuke heard the actual purpose, he found himself thinking.
Contact with the nobility.
That could mean several different things. Positioning for future moves. Getting a read on how the noble houses thought. Laying groundwork for operations still in the planning phase.
The possibilities were numerous.
But one specific sequence from the original story came back to him almost immediately.
Aizen growing suspicious over the verdict against Kuchiki Rukia. Going directly to the noble houses to find out more. And then discovering Central 46 had been wiped out entirely.
That scene, when it had landed in the original story, had hit with real force. Watching a conspiracy of that scale break into the open was genuinely gripping.
As for who had done the wiping: obviously Aizen. He had never carried any particular reverence toward those figures to begin with. And when his purposes required it, there was nothing he wouldn't use.
So tracing the logic forward from here: Aizen begins making contact with the nobility, gathers intelligence on their positions and tendencies, uses that as reference for what comes next.
Then concludes they're useless, writes them off completely, quietly removes them all, and issues his own orders under their names.
Honestly, that did hold together.
Matsushita Yusuke kept the running commentary strictly internal and accepted the task without hesitation.
Aizen was a local in ways that Matsushita Yusuke wasn't. His relationship with the nobility was one that needed its own process of disillusionment. That was necessary, and it made sense.
He agreed without making a production of it.
"That's a real help. In that case, I don't have anything else on my end. If you're busy, I won't keep you."
"Honestly, yes, I'm pretty busy. In that case, Aizen-sensei -- I'll see you later."
Leaving the underground meeting site beneath the Standing Heaven Club, on the walk back to Squad 11, Matsushita Yusuke let a pained expression settle onto his face.
Running the administrative work for two squads at once?
And specifically the kind of work he was worst at. Genuinely rough.
The thought faded on its own as soon as he stepped back into Squad 11 and returned to his office.
Because his office was not empty.
Soifon was already there, as expected, waiting to deliver her regular briefing. But standing alongside her were two unfamiliar figures.
Both of them heard the footsteps behind them and half-turned, and in that movement their eyes met Matsushita Yusuke's.
The one at the front was already smiling, and she crossed the distance to him in a quick, light-footed jog.
She opened with a greeting that carried considerable energy.
"Captain Matsushita! It's been a while! Do you still remember me?!"
The voice was bright. Lively. The kind of warmth you got from someone naturally outgoing, the easy friendliness of a big sister next door.
And the appearance was difficult to miss. Long orange hair that fell in waves, a small beauty mark at the corner of her mouth, a face that drew attention, and a way of putting herself together that went considerably beyond standard.
She was wearing the same Shinigami uniform as everyone else.
And yet somehow, what was happening at the front of her uniform was operating at a level that Soifon multiplied five times over could not begin to approach.
She had a pink shoulder wrap on top, and the waist ties of her uniform pants were looped and knotted across her midsection into a bow that was large and conspicuous enough to qualify as its own statement.
Matsumoto Rangiku.
To be completely honest, when Matsushita Yusuke was young and watching this story for the first time, she had just been visual noise in the background. He wanted to watch the protagonist cut things. Big hair and waves weren't the priority.
Time had a way of adjusting perspectives.
A quiet cough, a brief internal reset, and Matsushita Yusuke produced a calm and easy smile.
"Ah, Matsumoto. It's been a while."
They weren't meeting for the first time. Matsumoto had been serving as vice-captain long enough that their working paths had crossed before. The look was striking, but from Matsushita Yusuke's actual perspective, what registered about Matsumoto Rangiku was her capability.
During Isshin's extended absences, her management of Squad 10's administrative operations and day-to-day adjustments had been genuinely impressive. He had done enough administrative work himself to know exactly how brutal that kind of responsibility was, and she had handled it without visible strain.
Someone both willing and able to deal with that type of work was a rare and valuable thing.
He had even heard someone float her name at a smaller captain meeting as a potential interim Squad 10 captain. The administrative case for it was strong. But the proposal had been turned down without much discussion.
The reason was simple: not enough raw strength.
One run of the acting-captain arrangement had been enough. Repeating it too often stopped looking like a practical solution and started looking like a structural problem.
That said, it was a clear indication of where Soul Society's priorities actually sat. Administrative ability mattered. But strength was still the metric that moved a captain's seat.
Matsumoto's specific performance ceiling was simply not there yet.
"Ahaha, you still remember me! That's such a relief!"
She pressed her hands together, laughing, and then -- apparently too pleased to stay still -- bounced lightly on the spot.
The outfit said polished. The movement said completely unguarded. The gap between the two was almost comedic.
And the bounce itself had considerable follow-through.
That nearly pulled Matsushita Yusuke's eyes in a direction he had not authorized.
He reeled them back.
I'm a one-person man. Always will be. Small is honestly fine too.
After a brief internal monologue that he was taking to his grave, his gaze settled back on Matsumoto's face, and he asked with a composed expression:
"So. What brings you both here today?"
"Handover! Obviously!"
She held up the document folder in her hand and gave it a light, deliberate shake, like she was showing off a prize.
"To be honest, after my captain disappeared we were all pretty worried about who might end up being sent over. You never know when you might end up stuck with someone difficult to work with."
But that concern was gone now.
Because Matsushita Yusuke was clearly not someone Matsumoto Rangiku had any complaints about.
"Working with someone familiar is so much easier. And since you already had joint patrol experience with Captain Isshin, you understand how we operate. Communication will be fast and the whole thing will run smoothly."
Familiarity did make things considerably easier, and given how unsettled Squad 10's mood currently was, having this kind of arrangement was genuinely stabilizing.
Matsushita Yusuke pressed his lips together and let out a quiet sigh.
She was right, technically. But Matsumoto was smiling a little too broadly.
Like someone who had just found a very convincing reason to coast.
"I want to be clear upfront -- this is a temporary arrangement. In practice, what I'm doing is handling external communications and issuing direction. The actual judgments and the real adjustments need to come from inside your squad. That's your responsibility."
Matsumoto gave a small laugh, apparently unsurprised by this entirely, and shrugged.
"Of course, of course. Which is actually why I brought another candidate along."
Right, right.
"Let me introduce you! This is Squad 10's rising star -- the one who'll eventually take over the captain position -- and don't let the age fool you, he's already a seated officer!"
Even from the description alone, Matsushita Yusuke already had a fairly good idea who was standing there.
He looked in the direction she was indicating.
And found himself meeting the eyes of a white-haired kid with an expression that communicated both pride and irritation in equal measure, a look that said clearly enough: I know exactly who I am, and I don't need anyone's approval to know it.
So.
Here we go.
"Hitsugaya-kun, right? Nice to meet you."
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