Chapter 087: Time to Cheat
The setback did not mean Kongozō had hit its ceiling.
It just meant he was still too weak.
If he could hold on longer. If his hands could take more hits before the grip failed completely.
Given enough sustained contact, Kongozō would have kept working through Bawei's structure bit by bit, finding the gap, and eventually breaking all the way through.
Though "breaking through" needed some clarification.
The destruction Kongozō produced was not permanent. It scattered the reiatsu in the target structure without fully dismantling it. Give a Zanpakuto enough time to recover and it could reconstitute. What had happened to Miasa was the same principle: not total destruction, but a sudden loss of the weapon mid-fight, which was more than enough.
As a Physical-type ability, Matsushita Yusuke was satisfied with how it had performed. But it came with limitations that were now sitting in front of him in plain terms.
First: it had no effect on anything without a fixed physical form. Kyoka Suigetsu was the obvious example. Something you could not make direct contact with was something Kongozō could not break.
Second: when the power gap was too large, sustained contact was not achievable.
Both blades needed to stay in contact long enough for Kongozō to do its reading and adjust. Against Kijishi, that window kept closing before the work was done. The result was that the ability had only reached the outer shell, cracked the lightning layer, and stopped there. Not enough time. Not enough reiatsu behind it to push further.
And now the strength on both hands had given out.
Holding a blade in this condition was not a realistic option.
Which meant, if he was being honest with himself:
He had lost the sword fight.
Clunk.
The grip released.
Kongozō dropped and hit the ground with a dull impact, sending a small cloud of dust and ash drifting upward. Blood ran in slow lines along the curves of both palms and dripped from his fingertips, staining his hands a vivid red.
Kijishi watched all of it and did not move.
He narrowed his eyes and began to pace sideways, circling slowly.
The rough exterior was exactly that. Underneath it, Kijishi Kenpachi was a careful man.
If he could have simply walked over Matsushita Yusuke with no resistance, there would have been no hesitation. But the situation in front of him was not that. A student had cracked the lightning shell of his Bawei. A student was in Shikai. Either of those facts on its own would have given him pause. Together they told him to treat this like it still had teeth.
Even when the outcome seemed obvious: the careful hunter moved slowly.
He stalked forward, step by deliberate step.
Everyone watching could read the situation. Which meant some of them were already making their own decisions about it.
Soifon had seen enough.
She grabbed her outer robe with one hand and pulled it off in a single motion, dropping it and stepping forward in her operational clothes, hand going to her blade.
"Stop right there!"
That voice was not hers. It came from the Squad 11 members closing around her, blades drawn, expressions locked and serious.
"This is Captain Kijishi's fight. We are not allowing any interference. Step back."
One of them had sharp eyes and caught the mark on her uniform.
"Squad 11 does not answer to the Onmitsukido. If you push this any further, we'll treat it as a declaration of war."
A blunt play, but not an ineffective one. The relationship between an individual and the organization they represented was not something that could just be set aside. It gave Soifon a reason to pause, even briefly.
She paused. Then she made her call.
"I don't care. You're executing someone. Let him go."
She dropped the robe the rest of the way and drew, reversing her grip. Her eyes swept the ring of Squad 11 members around her, and her whole body coiled like something about to release.
At the same moment, further back.
"Aizen-sama..."
Tosen's voice came out as he reached down, hand dropping to rest on the hilt at his side.
The leader's judgment mattered. But for an organization that was already short on people it could count on, Tosen's own priority was clear. He was not going to watch a comrade die in a place like this.
So he was going to act.
"Wait, Tosen."
Aizen's voice stopped him, and Tosen's jaw locked shut.
He had expected not to be understood immediately. Explanations took time, and time was what they did not have. Different vantage points produced different readings of the same situation, and that gap between perspectives showed up in moments like this one.
Not surprising.
So he had a backup plan. Move first, apologize after. Keep him alive, deal with the rest later.
Tosen drew the blade in silence and was about to step forward when Aizen moved in front of him.
"Aizen-sama!"
"Don't misread this, Tosen."
Aizen was facing away from him, one hand adjusting his glasses, voice entirely level.
"What I was going to say is that you don't need to do anything. I'll end this fight myself."
The quality of a leader had never come from authority.
It came from the things they actually did when it mattered.
For Aizen Sosuke, rules and formal protocols were not constraints. They were tools and, when useful, obstacles to step over. He was not going to permit Matsushita Yusuke to die here, and he was not going to pretend otherwise.
I will handle it personally.
That signal went out as his right hand rose slightly and pressed down toward the distant scene, everything in the space around him drawing to a single gathered point, the way a slow-burning line of sparks reaches the charge at the end.
And then.
Matsushita Yusuke let out a long breath.
"Alright. Enough of that."
Kongozō faded and was gone.
A different light appeared in its place, slower and more contained, surface of it turning inward rather than out.
The presence around Matsushita Yusuke shifted. His voice, when it came, had gone noticeably lighter.
"Trying to win in a straight physical fight was always going to be a stretch. The Physical path is a tough road."
So.
Time to cheat.
Kido-type: Release.