Chapter 062: Cut
Kido #2: Light.
Like everything else Matsushita Yusuke had put together, a carefully rebuilt and restructured Kido was his tool for the fight. A weapon designed for exactly this kind of situation.
Naturally, given who was watching and how many of them there were, he had been conservative about the delivery.
No chant. The activation words had been spoken internally, a quiet murmur in his own head. From the outside, it had looked like nothing more than an aggressive forward motion followed by his left hand coming up partway.
And then, in the space of an instant, a blinding burst of light erupted from his left palm.
"What--"
Miasa Susumu had not seen it coming.
He had been locked on, eyes tracking everything. He had been ready to counter.
But the sudden light hit his field of vision and wiped out his target location in a single moment.
The forward momentum that had been carrying him toward an attack converted into a stumble. The sharp expression on his face crumpled into something involuntary. He stepped back twice, right hand sweeping in front of him, left hand pressing hard against his face while he worked to clear his eyes.
Matsushita Yusuke watched the reaction and let an expression of quiet satisfaction settle across his face.
His Kido were hybrid constructions built from low-numbered Hado and Bakudo, techniques too basic to impress anyone on their own. Which meant the only value in them was the angle. Come from somewhere unexpected.
Play support.
Run it through a Hado framework but build the Bakudo's binding energy in underneath it. Drive it to peak output and let it flash. Stripped down, it was essentially throwing a handful of powdered lime in someone's eyes.
A one-time trick. An initial encounter surprise.
But it was enough.
He watched Miasa stumble and narrowed his eyes.
Chase it.
A chance like this didn't come around twice. Let it go and he'd never get the same opening again.
The distance was right. The posture was right. A high overhead two-handed cleave, straight down the center line, was the cleanest available option. He ran through the sequence in his head, felt his weight shift forward, drew a short breath.
Here we go.
Aizen turned his head a few degrees, expression neutral. Kijishi, watching from the side, made a short low sound.
And then, like something that had been sitting just below the surface of his awareness and finally pushed through, a single clear instinct arrived.
Something is wrong.
The logic wasn't complicated. Matsushita Yusuke went straight to the source.
From a game design perspective.
A quest with a reward like that one. Does it let you close it out this easily?
It does not.
He stopped. Hard. His whole body torqued against his own forward momentum and pulled up short.
Stop.
The blade came in the next instant.
No warning. No sound. A flash of cold light swept across the space directly in front of where he had been about to commit his body, sharp and completely silent.
Miasa Susumu had executed a crouching horizontal slash.
The speed on it was not something assembled in the moment. That level of completion, that exact combination of speed and precision, only came from something that had been drilled until it stopped being a technique and started being a reflex.
"You dodged it?"
Miasa stepped back slowly.
His eyes were still burning. The redness was visible even from a distance. But the voice that came out of him was the same settled, unhurried quality it had been at the start.
"Instinct? Or did you see it coming? Either way." A short pause. "You're not ordinary."
That line should have belonged to Matsushita Yusuke.
Because in the brief blank moment that followed the near-miss, his heart was moving considerably faster than it had been. The particular relief of a very close call ran through him and he took a breath around it, pressed his lips together, and stepped back.
Then raised his hand and pressed it against his left side.
"Likewise."
He hadn't fully dodged.
A short, sharp sound. The fabric at Matsushita Yusuke's left side tore open along a line roughly the width of a palm, splitting cleanly from the surface. The skin beneath had been divided the same way, the edges separating like something pulled apart, blood running steadily from the cut.
"Please bandage that. I also need a moment to adjust to that technique of yours."
Miasa sheathed without ceremony, raised both hands, and began pressing his fingertips against his temples and the area around his eyes.
What was that about?
The question formed and stayed internal.
Matsushita Yusuke said nothing. He cut a strip from his sleeve with a short movement, wrapped it around his midsection, and pulled it tight. Basic pressure. Basic containment.
During the brief break that followed, Aizen had the opportunity to turn to Kijishi.
"Captain Kijishi. That officer of yours. Where did he come from?"
"Sancho? Oh, you mean Miasa."
Kijishi's tone had acquired a thread of something that was clearly pride.
"Found him out in the Rukongai myself. Born in the Moi district. West seventy-seven." A short sound of amusement. "You probably haven't heard of it."
Aizen raised his hand and adjusted his glasses with the same composure he brought to everything.
"West district seventy-seven. Life is quite hard out there."
The Rukongai was divided into four zones corresponding to the cardinal directions, with numbered districts in each extending outward from Seireitei. The higher the number, the further from the center. The further from the center, the further from resources, from order, from anything that made survival easier.
For the people living at the outer edges, simply continuing to exist was a genuine accomplishment.
Spiritual bodies technically didn't need food. Water alone, absorbed through the kind of passive environmental process that kept souls together, was enough to sustain them at a minimum. But that baseline was a long way from comfortable.
"Past district seventy-eight, water itself becomes scarce. Even at seventy-seven, the situation isn't much better."
After delivering that plainly, Aizen lifted his chin slightly and let the implication stand on its own.
People who came up in places like that were better at fighting for what they needed than anyone from inside Seireitei.
"So he's someone you found and brought in from out there?"
Kijishi's grin was the specific variety of someone about to talk about something they were very pleased with.
"Daijo Mushin-ryu successor. Supposedly the line had already died out. Completely discontinued." He let that sit for a moment. "Their specialty is iaijutsu. Off-rhythm attacks. Anything designed to catch you before you're ready. Honestly? If I didn't release my Zanpakuto, he'd give me real trouble."
Aizen's expression shifted by exactly one degree.
"You put someone of that caliber in front of an Academy student? Captain Kijishi, don't you think that's somewhat unreasonable?"
"Hm?"
Kijishi rubbed his cheek and smiled with the easy manner of someone who genuinely hadn't considered this a significant issue.
"Ah, that. Don't worry about it. Miasa knows where the line is. He's not going to do anything actually excessive. You can relax."
Not convincing.
But Aizen didn't move to stop it.
Because he also wanted to see.
What Matsushita Yusuke could actually produce against someone at this level.
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