Chapter 092: Theory Confirmed
Matsushita Yusuke had been sitting on a question for a long time.
What was the underlying logic of Soul Society?
The commonly understood answer was that everything in Soul Society was composed of reishi. Life. Inorganic matter. All of it built from the same material, distinguished only by the complexity and arrangement of its structure.
Which raised a follow-up question.
If someone could completely master the reconstruction and recombination of reishi, would that not be, in its own way, a kind of total comprehension of everything Soul Society was made of?
Theory and practice had a gap between them, though. A river that needed crossing, where the method, a bridge, a boat, swimming through it, each one required its own cost. And as someone who was still an Academy student, what he could actually attempt had natural limits.
So the deeper exploration had stayed theoretical.
Until now.
The opportunity was right in front of him.
Under normal circumstances, Matsushita Yusuke would not have used his own body as the test subject for something like this. But the situation was different here. Even if this attempt failed, the arm could be restored through other means afterward. The Research and Development Bureau had more than a few tools for situations exactly like this.
It had been established in the original story: Yamamoto's severed arm could have been regenerated. He had simply declined on principle, refusing to let Mayuri Kurotsuchi have anything to do with him.
So Matsushita Yusuke was not worried. What he was, if he was being honest with himself, was a little excited.
Shingonkai was still active. The window was still open.
His internal reiatsu reserves were sufficient. His physical condition was manageable. Tired in the mind more than anywhere else, but functional. Enough to sustain one more attempt.
Replace.
That was the word he had found. Remove what remained of the damaged material entirely, and substitute it with something new.
The reishi answered him clearly.
Soifon watched, too surprised for any other reaction, as the reishi on Matsushita Yusuke's right arm began to flow and combine and slowly take shape.
It was a process close to building something from nothing.
The bones first.
Like countless hands working somewhere below visibility, weaving and supporting. The framework assembled itself without sound, and the presence it put out was solid and fundamental, the way a foundation feels before the structure above it is built.
Then came the nerves, the connective tissue, the shape of the muscles.
Color began to enter the picture gradually.
Fine branching lines extended through the air at every angle, suspended, holding their position without support, like bridges built mid-span over open space. Below them, around them, translucent blood vessels appeared.
At this point Matsushita Yusuke's brow had pulled together without him deciding to do it.
The reason was simple. He could feel his internal reiatsu being drawn out at a rate that was not trivial. There was a faint ache to it that told him the cost of creating something from nothing was larger than he had estimated.
But it was manageable. He was still in it.
He was the one doing this and also, in a real sense, watching it happen. This was important data. The outcome of this attempt was the most direct test his theory had ever had.
So. Accelerate.
He began actively feeding reiatsu into the process, and the rate of progress shifted immediately.
Two seconds. The rough outline of a right hand had formed.
From a distance it was still vague. From Soifon's position it was considerably more detailed, and the detail was unsettling in a specific way.
Matsushita Yusuke's right arm had the look of an anatomical diagram brought into three dimensions. Every component visible, each in its correct relationship to the others, intricate and precise in a way that was accurate to the point of being deeply strange.
It did not look like something a person should have.
The next stage released.
Red appeared without announcement.
Blood began moving.
In the span of a single blink, Matsushita Yusuke's right hand had taken on its own shape.
He narrowed his eyes, feeling the feedback returning through the new limb, and tried moving his fingers.
Slightly stiff.
Expected. This was nowhere near complete.
Neural connections to fill in. Fat and fine tissue to layer through. And finally, the last thing.
Skin.
Deep blue bands of light crossed and recrossed in the air, each one settling into place on Matsushita Yusuke's right hand, forming the corresponding patches one section at a time.
"You..."
Soifon had run out of words entirely.
The Research and Development Bureau existed in this timeline. But under Urahara's current approach, the more unconventional developments, the ones that pushed against what people understood to be possible, were still in careful early stages.
Limb regeneration.
For anyone below captain level, the concept was somewhere between impossible and incomprehensible.
And what had just happened had taken approximately five seconds. In plain view of everyone present, Matsushita Yusuke had rebuilt his own arm from the inside out.
The speed of that recovery alone was something no one had a framework for.
Nobody broke the silence. Then Matsushita Yusuke surfaced from his focus, looked up, and put his usual expression back on.
Theory confirmed.
He had also walked away from this with something deeper than a working hypothesis. The understanding of what he had just done, and what it meant, had settled into him in a way that would not be undone.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Captain Kijishi. Shall we pick up where we left off?"
Kijishi staggered back half a step.
His jaw locked. Then he made a sound, turned around, and ran.
No dignity left to preserve, no reason to stay.
His Bankai had been his final card, and it had been beaten back before he'd finished drawing it. And now this person had rebuilt his own arm in seconds in front of a street full of witnesses. Whatever Kijishi's framework for the world had been before today, Matsushita Yusuke had just dismantled it from the ground up.
Was this a person?
Was this a normal Academy student? An ordinary Shinigami who would end up as a squad member?
He did not know the answers. What he did know was that he had no interest in dying.
So there was only one available course of action.
Run.
"...?"
Matsushita Yusuke watched this, and blinked.
He ran?
Given the name Kenpachi and everything that title was supposed to mean, given Squad 11's entire character as an organization, this was not an outcome Matsushita Yusuke had remotely considered.
He had lost focus for one moment and the man was already a thumbnail-sized shape in the distance, getting smaller.
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