Chapter 181: Farming Is the Meta Answer
The next time Matsushita Yusuke laid eyes on Zaraki, it was roughly two months later.
Two months was, admittedly, a long stretch. But considering that he hadn't held back at all during the fight, and considering what Zaraki had looked like afterward: charcoaled down to the bone, hands and feet crumbled to ash...
Matsushita Yusuke could only let out a quiet, resigned laugh.
The fact that Unohana had pulled him back from that was a genuine testament to what she was capable of.
"Hey!"
The voice came from directly in front of him and snapped him back. He looked up.
He was sitting behind his desk. Standing in the doorway was Zaraki, no longer in the ragged Rukongai clothes from before, now dressed in a shihakusho.
The man's hands and feet had grown back, clearly. But the hair.
That seemed to be giving him some trouble.
He was completely bald at the moment, glowering across the room with an expression that communicated very little in the way of goodwill.
"Matsushita Yusuke!"
"I can hear you fine without the volume."
Matsushita Yusuke was digging at his ear with his right pinky finger, looking mildly exasperated.
"So. Was there something you came to see me about today?"
Zaraki crossed the distance in quick strides, closed his right hand into a fist, and slammed it down on the desk.
Yusuke's teacup rattled hard enough to nearly jump off the surface.
"I'm joining your squad!"
Pure, direct, no detours. Classic combat-type.
Matsushita Yusuke nodded along cheerfully.
"Sure, sure. Sign this enrollment form, then head next door in a bit to pick up your uniform and squad insignia. Evening is group training, keep that in mind. Everything else is free time. Do whatever you want, I'm not going to bother you."
"..."
Zaraki stalled completely.
Too easy. He had no idea how to follow that.
This was not how it was supposed to go. The expected flow was: Yusuke refuses. Then Zaraki, through sheer force of will and stubborn persistence, makes his case in word and deed, hammers on his conviction, forces the issue until they reach an understanding through the clash of their philosophies, and finally gets welcomed in.
That was the script. That was how this was supposed to play out.
You can't just say yes. Just like that. What was all that mental preparation for?!
"Are you just going to stand there? Do you need me to walk you over?"
"No!"
Zaraki snatched the form out of Yusuke's extended hand with a poorly concealed expression of irritation and looked it over.
Then went quiet.
"..."
"..."
Matsushita Yusuke caught on.
"Oh. You can't read. That's fine, just head next door directly. I'll authorize it."
From behind Zaraki, a small figure was peeking out with exaggerated caution, showing only half a face.
"Can I... join the squad too?"
This kid. Matsushita Yusuke's eyebrow rose slightly, and he straightened up in his chair.
Kusajishi Yachiru. As a Zanpakuto that had learned to walk around on its own, her very existence was the kind of thing that warranted a second look.
If the timing were right, Matsushita Yusuke would have liked to look more closely. But they weren't familiar enough yet, and that could wait.
"Of course. You came with him, right? Sticking together going forward is perfectly fine. Consider that my personal authorization. Just let Soifon next door know."
As he said it, his gaze drifted back to Zaraki's face.
Something caught his eye.
The man was wearing an eye patch.
"What's that?"
Zaraki raised his right hand and lightly touched the side of his face. His tone was flat and unhurried.
"I had someone make it for me. After the fight with you, I realized my reiatsu control was too messy. It's not really that I was consciously suppressing my strength. It's more that I was never able to freely control that portion of it in the first place."
Therefore.
"Blocking it down to a workable level, then releasing it bit by bit as I actually learn to manage it properly. That approach makes it easier to get properly familiar with what I'm carrying."
Matsushita Yusuke stared at him like he'd said something that didn't make sense in the best possible way.
Hold on. You figured that out yourself? That doesn't match the profile I had in my head at all.
That stayed internal, of course. Because Zaraki genuinely wasn't stupid.
He had simply never had any direction before.
On anything related to combat, the man's instincts were sharp well past what his circumstances should have produced. He had a clear and specific awareness of his own weaknesses, and he had already moved to address them.
Matsushita Yusuke turned the thought over for a moment.
In the source material, this never happened to him, did it?
Nothing about it was described, but after smashing through Kijishi, Zaraki had presumably been on an unbroken winning streak all the way to the captaincy. Clear road, no obstacles.
And considering Unohana's arrangement with him: before the Thousand-Year Blood War finally arrived, the two of them probably hadn't had any real exchanges at all...
So in the original, you spent all those years just stomping weaker opponents?
Who knew. Now that this extra beat had been added to the sequence, maybe Zaraki would use it to settle something inside himself, dig out his potential a bit earlier than expected.
Whether or not that happened, there was no way to know yet.
Matsushita Yusuke watched the two of them leave and disappear through the door to the adjacent room, then settled back into his chair and let his gaze drift toward the squad management panel.
Squad 11 had few members at the moment. But every single one of them was the best of the best.
Future captain-level figures, the lot of them.
If they all developed properly, Squad 11's combat strength wouldn't just be strong. It would be the strongest in all of Seireitei.
Now that was what a real combat squad looked like, he thought, leaning back with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had earned the moment.
The pride lasted a little, and then the other thing came back.
Aizen Sosuke's Yamamoto long-game plan was a thorn in his side in its own particular way.
Without a clear path forward, Matsushita Yusuke couldn't shake the low-grade anxiety it left behind. No answer meant the worry just kept running.
So come on, all of you. Get stronger. You can't stay at this level forever. I need to start harvesting something.
Squad 11 is not this weak. Put your backs into it.
That evening, Zaraki and Gin Ichimaru had their first meeting.
Neither of them was impressed. But because they had a common thread, a certain Matsushita Yusuke who showed absolutely no concern for human beings and had beaten them both into the ground, they found their footing with each other fairly quickly.
Even without Yusuke around to supervise, the two of them could fall into a fight of their own accord.
Both of them had comparable potential ceilings, so their growth rates ran neck and neck. The result was a self-sustaining loop: each one pushing the other up, each session leaving both of them a notch stronger than before.
"For someone your size, you're surprisingly decent."
Gin wiped a scratch off his face, the smile on his lips not quite reaching his eyes.
"You're not bad either."
Back in his room, working through the Yamamoto problem with growing irritation, Matsushita Yusuke watched the Accrual Points tick upward one by one, and something like contentment settled into his expression.
Farming really is the meta answer.
Build the infrastructure right and the returns start dropping out of the sky. Now we're talking.