Chapter 285: Inheritance and Surpassing
Given how Zaraki operated on a daily basis and how many people he had managed to get on the wrong side of, a few days of discomfort wasn't exactly undeserved.
Matsushita Yusuke dropped the argument, watched his subordinate get carried off to wherever unconscious people got carried to, and considered the Zaraki situation closed for the time being.
Then he turned, smile already in place, and reached out both hands simultaneously -- one to each side -- and pulled the two people standing nearest to him into a loose, companionable drag.
"You two, though. You've both come a long way, haven't you."
Gin on the left.
"All this time I've been telling you to step up and show what you can actually do -- let the newer squad members see something worth learning from -- and you kept insisting you couldn't handle anything more demanding. You were playing that hand the whole time? You can go toe-to-toe with the first Kenpachi and you're telling me you've got nothing to offer?"
Hitsugaya on the right.
"And you -- always claiming the Squad 10 workload is too vague and complicated to manage without pushing it over to me. Seemed like you had a pretty clear head just now. You needed help with the administrative side of things? Did you? Really?"
He looked between them with an expression of theatrical exasperation.
"Doesn't even matter how many years of history we have -- sends an old friend straight to jail without blinking. You're like the Gotei 13's own incorruptible magistrate."
Both of them, he had to admit, were genuinely talented people.
The two of them, publicly addressed in sequence and left with no obvious line of counterattack, stood there with their heads turned in opposite directions.
Having both been taken apart in turn like that -- the only honest thing to say was that part of it was Matsushita Yusuke's doing. Not just these two. Zaraki as well, in his own way. All three of them had developed a certain comfortable reliance on having someone strong enough to cover whatever they couldn't handle themselves.
The shade of a large tree was easy to rest in.
That framing was probably not entirely fair. But it wasn't entirely wrong either.
The three of them had grown up in circumstances considerably more comfortable than the original story had given them. No deep grudges, no difficult histories, no painful roads. Everything had gone relatively smoothly.
Looking at the result now -- there was a slight suspicion that the easy path had produced a certain softness. A quality that wouldn't have been there if things had been harder.
Please don't tell me I raised them to be useless.
Matsushita Yusuke looked at them both staring in opposite directions and let out a resigned sigh, releasing his grip on both of them.
"I'm not going to say anything too harsh. But next time you do something, think it through a little more first." A pause. "That's all. Nothing else."
Gin needed to be more careful about his position. Hitsugaya needed to make his calls faster.
That was it.
Neither of them responded. There was a silent mutual understanding that this was the end of the topic, and Matsushita Yusuke didn't push it further. He turned toward Yamamoto.
He walked up without any particular formality and raised his right hand in an easy, relaxed wave.
"Old man, sorry about the mess this year."
Yamamoto took a small sip of his tea without looking up, then raised a hand and gave a loose wave back.
"Come sit. Let's talk."
The informality of it had reached a genuinely remarkable level.
Sasakibe Chojiro, standing nearby, let out a long, quiet breath that had been building for a while.
If he were inclined to catalogue problems, even those three seconds of interaction had produced no fewer than ten things that a strict interpretation of protocol would call unacceptable.
But.
Given that Yamamoto himself had no objection, there was no point pressing it. Worrying about something the emperor had already made peace with was not a role Sasakibe could sustain.
"I'll go down and assess the structural damage. I'll have a full report for you shortly."
He gave a small nod, stepped back, and turned to leave -- then stopped.
"Captain-Commander. Is the tournament concluded for this year?"
The tournament was a public event open to the entire Gotei 13. Whether it had officially ended was a question that properly required Yamamoto's input.
In previous years there had always been a closing announcement.
This year, given the state of the arena, any kind of formal closing ceremony would have been difficult to make dignified. The place had been demolished.
Yamamoto considered it briefly, eyes lowered, then let out a quiet sigh.
"Ask Captain Matsushita."
Matsushita Yusuke had just sat down. He accepted the remaining half of the sweet potato from Yamamoto's hand, blinked at the sudden question being directed at him, and thought about it for a moment.
"Just... call it done. For the standings -- give the top placement to whoever came in directly behind Zaraki."
The man was on his way to a holding cell. Having him listed as this year's winner on top of everything else would have been difficult to explain with a straight face.
Yamamoto nodded beside him.
"Arrange it that way."
Sasakibe withdrew. It was just the two of them -- old man and younger man -- left in that corner of the stands.
"How have you been lately?"
Yamamoto's tone was the same as it always was. Easy. Conversational. The register of someone asking about the weather rather than making an inquiry.
"Honestly... it's been a little harder than expected."
Matsushita Yusuke blew on the sweet potato and took a small bite.
Slightly overdone -- but compared to the soft, smooth kind, this version with some real resistance to it had its own character. Something to actually chew on.
He worked through a bite, let his gaze drift upward for a moment, and the expression that settled onto his face had something genuinely reflective in it.
"Married life turned out to be more demanding than I'd anticipated."
"Oh? Tell me about it."
Yamamoto pushed a cup of tea across with one hand. Matsushita Yusuke gave a small nod of thanks.
"It's just... I didn't realize how much effort goes into actually living with someone."
He scratched the back of his head and exhaled quietly.
"Soifon's always been hard to deal with, but lately it's been something else. She keeps pulling me away from whatever I'm doing -- wants me to take walks with her, spend time for no particular reason, things like that."
He clearly did not fully understand what was being communicated to him.
"I'm busy. Half a day goes by just going back and forth on it. I understand that pregnancy comes with different needs, but this is..."
Yamamoto clicked his tongue.
The old man let out a long, slow sigh and shook his head with the air of someone personally aggrieved.
"A life this full and you still can't recognize it for what it is. Forget the sweet potato -- I think what you need is a bite of Ryujin Jakka."
That said.
"For now, set the official work aside. Be present. Stop letting your attention go somewhere else." A measured pause. "Spiritual beings of high strength rarely choose to have children. Your situation is already unusual."
Understated. But Matsushita Yusuke caught the full meaning easily enough.
As had been discussed before -- the strength of a spiritual being corresponded to something fundamental about their nature. The level of power a being carried was not just a combat metric. It was a reflection of where they existed in terms of life itself.
A large animal does not produce small offspring.
The stronger a spiritual being, the more of what they carried -- the essential qualities that made them what they were -- would pass on through inheritance, embedding itself in whatever came next.
Ichigo was the clearest example of that principle in action. And Yamamoto, while no scholar of Shinigami heredity, had been alive for a thousand years. He had gathered enough scattered observations to know roughly how it worked.
"To be frank -- I find myself genuinely curious whether the child you and Soifon have will surpass you. Whether they will begin from a higher starting point than you did."