First Division — the conference hall.
The day after the Shihōin family banquet, the Captain-Commander convened a captains' council meeting. At its center, placed along the aisle between the two rows of assembled captains, was the hellfire phosphor-gas collected the previous day.
On the low table, black Spirit Particles pulsed with an ominous, inky miasma.
Unlike the Spirit Particles they knew — omnipresent, benign, the very fabric of their world — these particles had been corrupted by hell's breath and turned black. They had become a substance that a Shinigami's spirit body could no longer absorb or convert. Worse still, they might produce some manner of adverse effect on the spirit body itself.
"Gentlemen — do any of you know what this is?"
The Captain-Commander sat at the head of the table with the imperious ease of a man who owned the room, his gaze sweeping the captains arrayed on either side before settling on his own students.
Tōshirō had not been under his tutelage for long — but there was no chance that Shunsui Kyōraku or Jūshirō Ukitake would fail to recognize this substance.
"I recall you mentioning it once, Sensei…"
Ukitake recoiled instinctively from the black Spirit Particle on the table. "Perhaps… this is the breath of Hell."
He pressed a hand to his chest and coughed twice — as though the great god sealed within him found this baleful aura profoundly disagreeable. Or perhaps it simply despised anything that smelled of Hell.
[Hell] — the word sat strangely in the ears of every captain present.
Even in the textbooks at the Shin'ō Academy, it had merited barely a footnote — the kind of passage only an obsessively thorough student would ever notice. For most, it was the sort of knowledge point that passed clean through the mind and left no trace.
"You're saying this thing comes from Hell?!"
Standing across from Ukitake, Mayuri Kurotsuchi's face twisted into an expression of delighted shock. "I absolutely must study this. This is the legendary Hell we're talking about…"
"But why would the gates of Hell — sealed shut for eternity — suddenly begin leaking its breath now…"
Shunsui pressed his straw hat down over his brow, his expression deeply troubled.
And yes — even Shinigami had their superstitions.
Hell, to the captains of Soul Society, was the stuff of legend — a place very few of them had ever laid eyes on. Only the Captain-Commander, with his vast experience and incomprehensible lifespan, had identified it immediately.
According to legend: when a being of the 3rd Spiritual Rank or above died, their Spiritual Pressure was so immense — so impossibly concentrated — that the Spirit Particles composing their spirit body could not simply dissolve and return to the Three Worlds. Instead, they would drift, untethered, wandering through the world with nowhere to go.
Over countless ages, the Gotei 13 had developed a ritual to address this — the [Soul Burial Rite].
Whenever a being of the 3rd Spiritual Rank or above perished in Soul Society, the Gotei 13 would capture a number of Menos Grande and sacrifice them in the [Soul Burial Rite], hoping through this ceremony to coax the wayward Spirit Particles back into the earth of Soul Society.
In truth, no ritual could ever accomplish that. Once a spirit body of that rank died, its Spirit Particles were simply incapable of returning to the embrace of the Three Worlds. But neither could one allow such powerful Spiritual Pressure to go on wandering the Three Worlds unchecked.
And so the [Soul Burial Rite] served another purpose — one beyond superstition and the comfort of the living. Its true function was this:
To drive the powerful, wandering Spiritual Pressure still lingering within Soul Society — into Hell.
The Captain-Commander's lecture came to a close.
"That doesn't add up, Sensei Yamamoto."
"Hell's gates have stood secure for a million years. Why would the condemned souls within — these 'sinners' — suddenly be breaking out now?"
As the vessel bearing the seal of the [Soul King's Right Hand], Ukitake was privy to certain secrets that the others were not.
At that, the Captain-Commander cast a sideways glance at Soifon standing nearby, then pressed two fingers to his brow in a pained grimace.
"The truth is — the stability of Hell's gates has never depended solely on the Soul King's suppression. Every spirit body possessed of great Spiritual Pressure serves as a cornerstone holding those gates shut."
"But after war upon war upon war, powerful spirit bodies have been flooding into Hell without cease. Even Hell's boundless depths are approaching their limit."
"As I mentioned to you all some time ago — the [Wandenreich], which had been lurking in the shadows and watching our every move, has been singlehandedly annihilated by Captain Soifon. The progenitor of the Quincy has also… temporarily perished."
"Yhwach and his Quincy possessed tremendous Spiritual Pressure — they, too, were pillars holding Hell's gates in check. And on top of that, Azashiro Sōya's rampage through Hueco Mundo sent a great many powerful spirit bodies pouring into Hell."
"Hell's gates can no longer hold shut."
Buried within the Captain-Commander's matter-of-fact briefing was a piece of news that should have shaken all Three Worlds to their foundations — Yhwach had temporarily died?
Wait. What did "temporarily" even mean?
If they'd known Captain Soifon was this capable all along, why hadn't they simply pointed her at the [Wandenreich] from the very beginning? What had all their careful patrols and anxious tiptoeing been for?
For a moment, every captain in the room turned toward the Captain-Commander with identically aggrieved looks.
"Oh my? So my [Operation Sunshine] won't be seeing any use after all?"
Mayuri scratched his cheek with a trace of genuine disappointment. "Though I'll be stating for the record upfront — the budget is not being returned."
Ignoring the captains' collective grievances entirely, the Captain-Commander went on to relay Starrk's account to the assembled captains, before delivering his own conclusions:
"Saitō the Undying — the immortal former captain of the First-Generation Sixth Division, who died in the Millennium War — was sent into Hell by our own Soul Burial Rite at the time."
"However, just now, Captain Soifon and I detected a powerful Arrancar Spiritual Pressure emanating from the Rukongai. Our current assessment: Hueco Mundo has been occupied by Saitō the Undying."
Even so, the Captain-Commander judged that this alone might not be enough to put the assembled captains on an adequate war footing.
So he tilted his head toward the conference hall doors and called out in a clear, commanding voice:
"Come in — No. 1, Starrk."
The doors swung open with a creak, and the languid, unhurried figure of Starrk appeared before the captains of the Gotei 13 — quite possibly the first Arrancar ever to set foot in the Captains' Council chamber.
At the sight of him, most of the captains present reacted with visible shock, followed almost immediately by bewildered glances toward the Captain-Commander — none of them could understand why an Arrancar had been invited in.
Even if this Arrancar happened to be serving under Captain Soifon, it was still a remarkable breach of decorum.
The Captain-Commander took in all their expressions, tightened his grip on his staff, and addressed Starrk directly.
"Release your Resurrección, Starrk."
"Do we really have to do this?" Starrk scratched the back of his head with obvious reluctance. "Isn't this going to be… a bit rude to the captains here?"
If you want to talk about rude — the moment you walked through that door, you'd already crossed that line…
Byakuya Kuchiki and Tōshirō Hitsugaya both pressed their lips into thin lines at that.
But when Starrk saw the grave, unyielding expressions on both the Captain-Commander's and Soifon's faces, he let the laziness fall away. In the next instant, the full, crushing Spiritual Pressure of the No. 1 Espada erupted from him.
"——Hunt them down, wolves."
When the Reiatsu and smoke from the Resurrección finally cleared, two Hōgyoku gleamed at his abdomen — one for Lilynette's soul, one for Starrk's own — and his body shimmered with a blue-green luminescence of Spirit Particles.
It was the first time the captains had ever faced Starrk at his absolute peak.
The mysterious No. 1 had been defeated so swiftly and anticlimactically on the Karakura Town battlefield — one hit from Ichigo Kurosaki's Getsuga Tenshō and he'd never risen again — that most of the captains had never truly grasped his actual power.
As they understood it now: among those whose Spiritual Pressure was this fathomless, this oceanic — besides Yamamoto, Soifon, Aizen, and Ichigo Kurosaki — Starrk appeared to be next.
"This has to be a joke. A being with Spiritual Pressure like this was beaten half to death?"
"Doesn't that mean the enemies from Hell are… absurdly powerful…"
Shunsui Kyōraku looked toward the Captain-Commander.
Across the room, Kenpachi Zaraki — eyepatch removed — had fixed his gaze on Starrk with undisguised, ravenous excitement, looking very much like a man who might draw his sword and take a swing at any moment.
Those with somewhat less Spiritual Pressure — Tōshirō Hitsugaya and Mayuri Kurotsuchi among them — were visibly uncomfortable now, as though they had stepped beneath a waterfall and had to actively reinforce their spirit bodies against the current pressing down on them.
"I believe the captain has misunderstood."
Starrk spread both hands and shook his head. "The one who attacked me was Azashiro Sōya — not some powerhouse from Hell."
He paused.
"And frankly, I was ambushed. I hadn't even entered Resurrección."
A strange, loaded silence fell over the room.
Then, from the corner of the hall, Mayuri — who had been quietly observing the hell-breath with a battery of instruments — suddenly let out a sharp cry. He stumbled backward several steps, eyes wide, staring at the black Spirit Particle on the low table with a contorted, delighted grin.
"Everyone — I've discovered another peculiar property!"
"Standard Spiritual Pressure detection equipment — and my own Reiatsu-sense — cannot detect the hell-breath's presence at all!"
"Which means: if the hell-breath is simply Spirit Particles corroded by Hell's miasma, then…"
"Enemies originating from Hell will all share this same characteristic!"
The moment Mayuri's words landed, every captain in the room swept their Reiatsu-sense across the jet-black Spirit Particle on the table and reached the same conclusion.
Had they not seen it sitting there in plain sight with their own eyes, they would have had no idea it existed.
And so, after Starrk released his Resurrección, the captains' council drew to a close.
The hell-breath particle was handed over to Mayuri for continued research. The Gotei 13 increased its patrol rotations and once again entered full combat-readiness.
...
Hueco Mundo.
Apart from the area Sōsuke Aizen had preserved with Dankū, the whole of Las Noches — that bone-white colossus — had been reduced to something indistinguishable from rubble, obliterated by Azashiro Sōya's Kidō.
Having spent some time merging his Bankai with the ruins of Las Noches, Azashiro Sōya sat atop a chunk of broken stone and studied Saitō the Undying with undisguised curiosity.
Saitō's eyebrow arched — and in the next instant, a razor-edged blade-pressure screamed through the air directly at Azashiro's face.
A [Dankū] materialized between them, absorbed the impact with a muffled boom, and both forces dispersed.
"My apologies," said Azashiro Sōya, his voice entirely neutral. "I've never seen a sinner returned from Hell in person before. If I gave offense, I apologize."
He lowered his hand and introduced himself with quiet composure. "Azashiro Sōya. Former captain of the Eleventh Division — once held the title of Kenpachi. After being imprisoned in Muken, I broke out."
"Kenpachi?"
At the word, Saitō looked him up and down, then let out a derisive snort. "Isn't that just a title that Yachiru brat invented for herself? You don't look like any kind of swordsman to me. And yet you call yourself Kenpachi?"
Azashiro Sōya offered no denial. It was true — his gifts had never been in swordsmanship. "You would be… the First-Generation Sixth Division captain. Saitō the Undying?"
"That's right." Saitō curled the corner of her mouth into a slow grin.
"Speaking of which — I owe you some thanks."
"If you hadn't gone on your little rampage through Las Noches and sent so many powerful spirit bodies flooding into Hell…"
She ran her tongue over her slightly parched lips. "I'd still be stuck rotting in that wretched place, waiting who knows how long for a way out."
So — Hell's gate had not been thrown wide open. Saitō had merely seized a fleeting, momentary opportunity.
When Gin Ichimaru and the others had died and plunged into Hell — when the Three Worlds and Hell's Spiritual Pressure equilibrium had flickered and destabilized — she had slipped free of the gate's seal in that razor-thin window of chaos.
Azashiro Sōya lowered his eyelids, processing this information in silence.
A moment later, he gave an unconcerned smile. "The Soul King will be replaced in a couple of years anyway. Whatever. I just want to kill Hollows."
Saitō listened, then ran her tongue along her canine teeth, her voice brimming with barely-suppressed glee.
"Fine by me."
"Kill as many as you like. The more you kill, the more brittle the Three Worlds' balance becomes — and the looser Hell's gates' suppression grows."
"When enough of the balance has crumbled… Hell's gates will be smashed open entirely."
——Meanwhile, in Soul Society.
The Captain-Commander refused every captain's request to accompany him to Hueco Mundo. He named only one person: Soifon.
He swept his gaze over the captains still standing in the council chamber, unconcealed and unsparing.
"Azashiro Sōya was a former Kenpachi. Saitō the Undying was the First-Generation Sixth Division captain — and after a thousand years in Hell, there's no telling how much stronger they've become."
"The current captains, collectively… if you followed recklessly, you would only become a burden."
"Furthermore, the Seireitei still requires each of you to hold the line."
With that, the Captain-Commander turned away from their reactions and looked toward Soifon at his side.
In the next moment, beneath the collective and complicated gazes of the assembled captains, a Garganta yawned open in the center of the captains' council chamber. The two figures stepped inside, and the dark maw slowly sealed itself shut behind them.
Inside the Dangai's chaotic currents, Soifon and the Captain-Commander moved side by side at tremendous speed.
The Captain-Commander came to a sudden halt. He crouched down, picked up a fragment of debris, and examined it carefully. An expression of utter disbelief crossed his face.
"The remains of Kōtotsu?!"
Soifon stopped alongside him and glanced back over her shoulder.
"Oh, that." She acknowledged it with complete, guileless honesty. "The last time I came through, I disposed of it on the way."
...
Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto was silent for three full seconds.
Then he drew a long, slow breath. "What in the world were you thinking?! You reckless child — you never stop causing trouble for me!"
The old man's roar rolled through the Dangai passage and sent the surrounding Spirit Particles quivering.
Soifon had come prepared.
The very instant the Captain-Commander had begun drawing that breath, she had already raised both hands and pressed her palms firmly over her own ears, her expression perfectly blank.
"And where did you learn to make that face?!" The Captain-Commander grew angrier still. "Did Yoruichi Shihōin teach you this?!"
Hmm? Was that actually a valid interpretation?
Soifon blinked, startled, then shook her head rapidly. "Lady Yoruichi didn't teach me anything — I just picked it up from being around her…"
The next instant, she broke into a run.
Two figures, one ahead of the other, shot through the Dangai passage, leaving Kōtotsu's wreckage far behind in their wake.
Hueco Mundo.
Stepping through the Garganta's exit, the first thing that met their eyes was a devastation that stopped the breath in the chest.
"To think they built a palace of this scale in Hueco Mundo."
The Captain-Commander stood at the edge of the ruins. It had been several hundred years since he had last set foot in this place.
In the next instant, both their figures vanished from the spot.
Azashiro Sōya and Saitō, mid-conversation, snapped their mouths shut in unison as two familiar silhouettes materialized before them.
The Captain-Commander's sharp gaze moved past Azashiro Sōya and came to rest on the girl with purple twin-tails wearing a captain's Haori.
——Just as Mayuri had said: no Spiritual Pressure whatsoever could be sensed from her. Only the naked eye confirmed that she was real.
And Saitō the Undying, the moment she recognized who had arrived, let her hand go still — the cloth she had been using to wipe her blade hanging motionless.
The corner of her mouth curled slowly upward.
"I've come back from Hell to see you, old comrade."
"And there's a new face beside you — this must be the Soifon that little one mentioned?"
Though the combined power of Azashiro Sōya and Saitō would not have been enough to stand against either the Captain-Commander or Soifon alone, they carried themselves with unshaken confidence all the same.
The condemned of Hell could not truly die — even if slain in the Three Worlds, they would simply resurrect within Hell once more. This was the very reason Hell had given the Soul King such a persistent headache.
As for Azashiro Sōya — he had already obtained intelligence about Hell from Saitō, and was firmly convinced that neither the Captain-Commander nor Soifon would dare move against him. After all, whatever else he was, he was a Kenpachi of the 2nd Spiritual Rank. Killing him would only send more power flooding into Hell and further loosen the seal.
"Had you stayed in Hell and kept your head down, I might have acknowledged you as an old comrade…"
BOOM——
In the next instant, Ryūjin Jakka cleared its sheath. A single stroke sent Saitō the Undying flying — the purple-haired figure was hurled backward and slammed into a heap of rubble with tremendous force.
CRASH——
"Who do you think you're underestimating, Yamamoto…"
Stone fragments showered the air as Saitō slapped the dust from her body and sprang upright. A visible sword wound had opened across her, and from the cut oozed a dark, black liquid.
Hiss.
Saitō scraped a smear of the black blood up with one finger and sucked it off thoughtfully. "You don't actually think I spent a thousand years in Hell doing nothing, do you…"
In truth — by the Captain-Commander's own assessment of how the blow had felt — Saitō had merely gone from dying in one stroke to dying in two. Some improvement. Not much.
Standing where he was, the Captain-Commander did not press the pursuit. The moment he had swung that first cut he had already had second thoughts — fortunately, he hadn't killed her outright.
He needed to keep at least one of them alive to extract information.
In the next moment, hundreds of Gikei emerged from every corner of the ruined palace, and began rotating at high speed with Soifon and the Captain-Commander at their center.
Azashiro Sōya leapt backward into the air. "Rikujōkōrō!"
Countless golden restraining plates materialized from every direction simultaneously, layering over one another and sealing both opponents within.
"You won't dare kill me, will you?"
Azashiro Sōya landed atop a great boulder. "You're afraid that if I die and fall into Hell, the seal on Hell's gates will grow even more unstable."
Hundreds of Gikei extended their arms in unison, palms turned toward one another.
——Azure Fire, Falling!
Flame collided with flame. The Gikei erupted like a chain of powder kegs detonating in sequence — burning limbs and scorched fragments flying in every direction as each puppet was consumed by its neighbor's fire.
Saitō scowled. "What kind of strategy is that?! Making your own soldiers kill each other?!"
Azashiro Sōya said nothing.
By the time the flames had finally guttered out and the smoke had slowly cleared, the charred-black puppets were still wheeling in slow circles overhead.
Then the Gikei locked onto the two opponents still bound by the Bakudō. Every broken arm rose simultaneously — and they plunged into a dive.
"Hadō #96——"
"Ittō Kasō!!"
A high-tier Hadō that could only be unleashed at the cost of incinerating part of the caster's own body — and here, hundreds of Ittō Kasō detonated upon a single point.
The crimson inferno merged into one titanic blade of flame that bridged heaven and earth, tearing a vicious gash across the eternal black sky of Hueco Mundo from end to end. Even the boundless desert far in the distance was washed bloodred by its light.
At the center of the blast — the air itself had been warped by the heat into something that hurt to look at directly.
Saitō the Undying raised a hand to shield her face against the scorching gale that threatened to blister the skin right off her.
Her hair whipped wild in the hot wind, and across her face spread a manic, exhilarated grin. "You're not half bad, kid!"
The smoke finally — fully — cleared.
The ground beneath Soifon and the Captain-Commander had been scorched entirely black. The ruins within three meters in every direction had been vaporized outright, leaving a perfectly circular crater in their place.
The Captain-Commander's captain's Haori had been incinerated, leaving only his charred Shihakushō still hanging from his frame. Soifon was spotless — the Blut Vene on her body pulsed with a faint, steady glow.
The Captain-Commander brushed the soot from his shoulder with the back of his hand and raised his eyes toward Azashiro Sōya.
"Playing with fire in front of me…"
"…You'll need another twenty thousand years of practice."
Even Saitō could not keep her eyes from going wide in flat-out disbelief. After an attack like that — these two were completely uninjured?!
This was worse than Hell itself!
Azashiro Sōya lowered his eyelids. After a long moment of silence, he made a decision that no one present had anticipated.
——The Bankai of Ame-no-Subaroshi was released.
In that same instant, every Gikei scattered across the ruins lost all Spiritual Pressure simultaneously — dropping like true dead things, utterly inert, every last trace of life extinguished.
Holding his Zanpakutō in its Shikai state, Azashiro drew a cold, gleaming arc through the air.
Thk——
The blade found its mark. Azashiro Sōya drove it through his own heart, twisted the grip with deliberate force — then swayed very slightly on his feet.
"When I return from Hell…"
Azashiro Sōya's body tilted backward and fell still. No breath remained.
____
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