Chapter 203: The Soul King
"So," Kukaku said, resting her cheek against her palm, "what brings the former head of the Technology Development Bureau here?"
Her tone was lazy, but the hostility in her eyes was sharp enough to cut. It was not truly aimed at Kisuke Urahara alone. It was aimed at Shinigami as a whole.
For the Shiba family, seeing so many Shinigami in one place was already disgusting.
Back when they still stood among the Five Great Noble Families, the Shiba carried a strange, stubborn spirit, part pride, part atonement. They had always leaned toward self sacrifice, even when better choices existed. Their ultimate secret technique, the Final Getsuga Tenshou, was proof of that nature. Only their bloodline carried a way to completely relinquish Shinigami power, trading everything for one fleeting moment of brilliance.
By Kukaku's generation, however, patience had rotted into exhaustion.
Kaien Shiba, her eldest brother, had been murdered in broad daylight. Isshin Shiba, her uncle, vanished on his way to the human world. Other relatives were killed, crippled, scattered. The Shiba family fading from Seireitei was not some political accident, it was a consequence that had been carved into them.
So now, with the dojo practically crawling with death spirits, Kukaku's anger rose like heat from a furnace.
Urahara stood there fanning himself, wearing that harmless smile. Behind him padded a black cat that yawned as if this were a casual visit to a shop. Nearby, Rangiku looked lost, like she had walked into the wrong room and could not find the exit.
Kukaku finally sat down cross legged, sake bowl in hand, and spoke in a low voice.
"I don't welcome you. Yoruichi might be my friend, but there are too many of you now. I hate Shinigami. You know that."
"Oh?" Urahara's eyes widened, and his voice turned apologetic in the smoothest way possible. "I see. I'm truly sorry. I didn't consider that angle. My negligence."
Kukaku's gaze hardened.
"You considered it just fine. That's why you kept sending people to my side along with Sosuke Aizen, right?"
"Hahaha, how could that be?" Urahara laughed loudly, waving his folding fan. "After all, I know it."
His cheer was so shameless that Kukaku felt, for a brief and violent moment, like her home had become a public latrine for geniuses. A place they could enter and leave whenever they pleased, acting like they owned the doors.
Over the past few days, Kukaku had thought through enough to understand one thing.
She was not Aizen's enemy.
That conclusion tasted foul on her tongue, but it did not stop being true.
Once the initial anger burned out and the noise in her head quieted, Kukaku remembered the wish the Shiba had carried for generations. When she compared it to Aizen's current goal, she realized something that made her stomach twist.
Their wishes did not conflict.
The Shiba family's wish had always been simple in its cruelty.
They wanted the betrayed Soul King to receive a proper ending.
Even now, that great sacrifice remained sealed alone in the Soul King Palace, serving as a wedge to stabilize the three realms. A world built on betrayal and humiliation was unbearable to the Shiba. They had opposed that plan from the very beginning, but by the time their protests mattered, the die had already been cast.
One day, somehow, they wanted to free the Soul King from endless suffering.
To prevent him from ever displaying that earth shattering power again, the Tsunayashiro family had dismembered him and kept him under control. The betrayal behind it was not something that could be spoken lightly. Other families accepted it with silence. Only the Shiba kept resisting, again and again, until resistance became a habit that could no longer change anything.
It was not that they lacked will, it was that the Tsunayashiro had too many ways to manipulate them. The Shiba controlled the passage. The Tsunayashiro recorded history itself. In the end, the man who sacrificed everything for the worlds was mutilated like an object, organs removed, limbs severed, bones scattered to the corners of existence.
And one of his fingertips had ended up inside Rangiku Matsumoto.
So after the emotional storm passed, Kukaku had to admit a truth she hated.
The Shiba family had no reason to oppose Sosuke Aizen in his current state.
After so many years, their guilt had curdled into obsession. They no longer cared how many Shinigami died, or how many Seireitei nobles screamed, not when the Soul King's existence stood at the root of it all. If Aizen's plan truly succeeded, it would mark a new era for the Shiba, whether they wanted that era or not.
Kaien. Isshin. Their parents. The family's dead and missing.
Everything had been tied, in one way or another, to the Soul King and the survival of their bloodline.
That was why Kukaku had allowed Ichigo to train chakra here. Because chakra was not Shinigami power. Because the Shiba were no longer playing the Shinigami's game.
It did not mean she would help Aizen.
It did not mean she would help Seireitei either.
If anything, she wanted to do nothing and let time decide, because that was the only position that did not make her feel dirty.
And if, by some impossible chance, Aizen turned out to be righteous, or at least as straightforward as Ichigo's loudmouthed friends, then Kukaku knew she would eventually be forced into motion.
But Aizen was Aizen.
The more she listened to him speak, the more certain she became that one day she would have to punch him, if only for her own sanity.
"No matter how you dress it up," Kukaku said, voice flat, "you're Shinigami in the end. The Shiba family has already sacrificed enough for Shinigami. I don't want to welcome any of you."
She lifted her sake bowl slightly, as if to toast the irony.
"It's just that Sosuke Aizen is too serious a problem right now. So for the time being, I'll tolerate it."
Rangiku blinked.
"Death doesn't welcome us?" she asked, pointing at herself, genuinely confused. "What did we do wrong? I'm a vice captain. If something's happening, I should at least have a say, right? What exactly happened?"
"Individuals like you may not have done anything," Kukaku said without looking at her. "But Shinigami as a group carry original sin."
Rangiku's mouth opened, then closed.
Beside her, Urahara adjusted the brim of his hat.
The black cat behind him turned its head away, ears flicking, as if even it did not want to meet Kukaku's eyes.
Kukaku stared at them, then glanced up again. Outside, captain level spiritual pressure flared once more. Kido flashes danced at the edge of the barrier like fireflies trapped under glass.
"My feelings toward Shinigami have always been hatred," Kukaku said, her voice steady. "From the beginning. Even now."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"I don't care much about individual Shinigami. Even the woman who killed my brother, Rukia Kuchiki, if she apologized properly, I wouldn't bother making a scene. But Shinigami as a whole? I have no good feelings."
She paused, then added with a bitter edge,
"Even toward someone like Sosuke Aizen, it's the same."
For a moment, the dojo fell silent.
Rangiku looked like she had been dropped into deep water without warning. She did not understand what she was hearing, or why she had been dragged into this room in the first place.
Urahara and Yoruichi exchanged a brief glance, then looked back at Kukaku, who wore the expression of someone waiting to be argued with, waiting to be persuaded, waiting to see what kind of excuse would be offered.
Urahara finally spoke.
"There's no need to be quite that serious, Kukaku," he said softly. "I've come because I have a concern. Maybe an immature one, but I can't ignore it."
He pulled his hat brim lower, and his voice grew quieter.
"After talking with Yoruichi, I've gained a clearer understanding of the Soul King, and of what happened between the five noble families."
He lifted his fan slightly, as if arranging the people in the room like pieces on a board.
"Here we have a part of the Soul King's body. We have the heirs of the Shiba and Shihouin families, who know a great deal among the five. And we have me, someone who once visited the Soul King Palace as a representative."
Urahara's smile was still there, but it no longer looked playful.
"Sosuke Aizen once tried to reach the Soul King Palace and destroy the Soul King to achieve his goal. He even created an Ōken and moved pieces to confront the Zero Division."
He paused, letting the contrast land.
"But now, he ignores the Soul King and the Zero Division completely. He is indifferent to us, indifferent to what was done to the Soul King."
Urahara's eyes narrowed under the shadow of his hat.
"If he truly has memories of the future, like he claims, then there are only a few possibilities. Either he knows nothing about the Zero Division, which I find hard to believe."
"Or," Urahara continued, "he realized something and abandoned his original plan. Not just abandoned it, but refused to even touch the Soul King Palace."
He glanced past Rangiku, deliberately skipping over the fact that she was carrying a fragment of the Soul King, and focused on Kukaku's face.
"That man doesn't give up easily. Even if he claims he's changed, his essence is still Sosuke Aizen. He wants to stand above everyone. That has always been his thought and his action."
Urahara's voice sharpened by a fraction.
"Even the Soul King, he would never simply let go. And yet right now, he has shown no intent to harm the Soul King, or even to influence him."
Urahara exhaled softly.
"That leads us to a conclusion I don't like."
Kukaku's sake bowl stopped halfway to her lips.
Urahara looked at her directly.
"So, Kukaku. I have a favor to ask."
His smile returned, thinner now, almost grim.
"Take us to the Soul King Palace."
"We need to prove something."
His final words dropped into the dojo like a blade into water.
"Sosuke Aizen might be standing with the Soul King."
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