Chapter 198: Bankai: Zanka no Tachi
Matsushita Yusuke's watching-and-waiting naturally went unheard by the person in question.
But even so.
Things seemed to be developing in a direction that could only be described as 'expected.'
A brief silence, already brewing something. After a pause of two breaths, a quiet, almost self-deprecating sound came.
Yamamoto, unusually, let the corner of his mouth pull back. He showed a smile that was both genuine and long-overdue.
"It has been a long time..."
The words flowed out with a quality that only comes after enduring something over time, carrying an ease that stopped you and made you look twice.
"An opponent who can injure me and make my blood run hot like this... it has truly been a long time."
The Hollow alt wouldn't have any particular reaction. Clearly the affection level was nowhere near triggering a special cutscene.
But Matsushita Yusuke was a different story.
He let out a quiet, involuntary sound from his hiding spot.
Huh?
This old man turning out to be a battle maniac? What a backhanded compliment to hand someone...
That said, when he thought about it honestly, Matsushita Yusuke couldn't claim to be that surprised by the reaction.
The reason was straightforward enough. For all that the man looked rigid and old-fashioned, Yamamoto was very much the type who genuinely loved to test himself against people.
First, personality: the fact that he could get along with that particular woman from the neighboring Squad 4 said a great deal about his real tastes right there.
Second, according to documented records, whenever there was a major battle, the old man typically led from the front.
That was certainly an expression of responsibility. But there was probably no small amount of personal enthusiasm folded into it as well. Maybe he just genuinely enjoyed it.
And of course.
The source material was the most honest evidence.
Every time Yamamoto was on the verge of going all-out, his opponents would find some way, any way, to prevent it, pouring every underhanded trick they had into stopping him. And the old man kept walking into them, one after another.
Got baited by Aizen into a move that cost him a hand. Should theoretically have learned something from that. Then in the Thousand-Year Blood War, walked straight into an even more underhanded shadow double trick.
Two for two. Maximum cost both times.
So when you looked at it from the outside, Yamamoto's position in the original story was genuinely awkward. Everyone knew exactly how strong he was, which meant everyone went all-out to make sure he never got to use it. Trip him up, pull every dirty maneuver available, run every possible countermeasure. And the old man kept eating it.
A real, unobstructed all-out effort, with an opponent actually worth the trouble, might well be genuinely rare for someone like him.
As for right now?
Matsushita Yusuke watched the temperature steadily rising and that stern, dark face visible through the turbulent reiatsu, and his own expression shifted, slowly becoming serious.
He needed no reminder. No instruction. Right here. Right now.
He felt a piercing sensation across his entire body, sharp and impossible to ignore, as though invisible needles were suspended in the air on every side, leaving him with a peculiar, mounting sense of having nowhere to go.
A thought surfaced that he couldn't hold back.
What is this?
The Zanpakuto hadn't been released yet, and the threat was already undeniable.
It felt exactly like a grazing animal on an open plain realizing it had been marked by a predator. The moment the situation fully registered, what poured down was a cold wave that had only one name.
Despair.
His heartbeat was accelerating without stopping.
But it was precisely because of that, that every bit of Matsushita Yusuke's attention snapped fully into place right now.
Watching a fight between opponents at this level was worth dying just to see... ah, wait. No. Intelligence gathering was the main purpose of this outing.
As long as he could witness Yamamoto's Bankai, Matsushita Yusuke would consider the entire objective of this ambush achieved.
So. Come on. Show me whether this Zanpakuto, the one capable of destroying Soul Society itself, truly holds the power its name implies.
"Boy."
Yamamoto spoke with a quiet, unhurried sigh.
"I must admit, you... are genuinely formidable right now."
He lowered the left hand he'd had pressed against his wound. His posture bowed slightly forward. He slowly opened his mouth and drew a long breath. The right hand gripping his Zanpakuto abruptly tightened.
Snap.
What was that?
Matsushita Yusuke blinked. Then he understood.
It was the sound of Yamamoto's entire body pulling taut at once, every muscle contracting simultaneously. Strange as it was to say, what was visible right now was Yamamoto's physical frame expanding by a noticeable margin at a visible rate.
This was not a technique or a special method.
Simply the body tensing, every muscle engaging under full force, producing a visual effect from pure physical commitment.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum...
A series of impossibly deep reverberations carried through the air.
Like a heartbeat, and yet also like some strange, irregular pulse. They resonated in Matsushita Yusuke's mind one after another.
He reached for them carefully, turned the thought over, and arrived at the answer.
This was the echo of a heartbeat, and also the sound of reiatsu steadily swelling, building toward the point where it could no longer contain itself.
The air around Yamamoto seemed to distort. Anyone looking toward him felt a subtle wrongness, as though what they were seeing was slightly out of step with reality.
"What you want to see is my Bankai, isn't it."
A veteran of his experience. Those instincts were simply there.
Yamamoto could feel very clearly the probing nature of everything that had been done here. From that, the conclusion wasn't difficult to reach.
These people wanted to see his Bankai.
What exactly could they do with it? What were they planning?
Thoughts like those surfaced one by one, and were just as quickly pressed back down.
At this point, questions like those had no further use. For the situation as it stood right now, only the Zanpakuto in his hand could give any answer.
Once he decided to act, he would leave no survivors.
"Ban...kai..."
Those two brief words fell.
The entire constructed domain went still.
Matsushita Yusuke, still hidden at the boundary of the domain, felt the change even more sharply on instinct.
The water came first.
The thin, clear layer of standing water that had pooled across the domain, caught in the blazing reiatsu surging off Yamamoto, evaporated in that same instant.
Light and heat twisted silently around him, boiling, stripping every drop of water from the entire domain in one breath.
Heat.
Beyond that, Matsushita Yusuke had no other sensation of any kind.
'Can this actually be real...'
Even with mental preparation in advance, only by experiencing it firsthand could he form any concrete understanding of strength at this conceptual scale.
Simply by releasing the Zanpakuto and letting it rest nearby, that blade alone was enough to change Soul Society. No.
The entire ecology of all three worlds.
Exhale.
The light and heat withdrew inward without a sound, and for an instant it was as though heaven and earth had gone white.
The Zanpakuto in Yamamoto's hand condensed, transforming into a shape like charred wood.
It had no visible light. No perceptible heat. But that was only in terms of outward appearance. Because even looking from this distance, all Matsushita Yusuke could make out was a figure slightly distorted by the temperature surrounding it.
"Zanka no Tachi."
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