Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 191 - Wayne vs. Retsu Unohana

The blood-red barrier dissolved into the air and was gone. The overwhelming Reiatsu Retsu Unohana had just unleashed vanished without a trace, as though it had never existed. The woman standing before him had suppressed her Reiatsu completely, not a single wisp leaked out, but those sharp eyes and the cold glint of her blade told Wayne clearly: if he wasn't careful enough in this fight, he'd be dead very soon.

As it turned out, that was exactly right.

Retsu Unohana didn't call a start. She simply used Shunpo and appeared behind him, her speed far beyond anything an ordinary captain could manage. Wayne had no time to react. He felt a chill bloom through his chest, followed by searing pain. He looked down and saw a length of Zanpakuto piercing through him, drops of blood falling to the ground like water leaking from a kettle.

"This... is way too fast." Wayne laughed bitterly. He felt the blade twist half a turn inside him, then drag sideways, his body was severed in an instant. Before he could even cry out from the pain, the other half was split apart by a sharp flick of Unohana's sword. Wayne was cut in two on the spot and stopped breathing.

"That's your punishment for being late, Hinamori-kun." Unohana looked at the corpse on the ground, her smile blooming like a flower. Her free hand settled gently on Wayne. A crimson light flared.

After some time, Wayne's consciousness returned to his body. Before him, Unohana drew her Zanpakuto once more. Everything started again.

So this is the pain of death, Wayne thought. The slash from moments ago felt vividly, horribly real. He reached up without thinking and touched his chest. Perfectly intact.

That pain of being cut clean in two by a blade... several times worse than when Aizen cut me back then, Wayne thought grimly, and steeled himself again.

WHOOSH!

Retsu Unohana used the same tactic. Shunpo, directly behind him. But this time Wayne was ready. His body hadn't even moved before he flipped his Zanpakuto in his grip and forced the thrusting blade aside. He blocked it, but the sheer impact force sent him flying anyway.

"Oh?" Unohana didn't press forward. She let out a soft, surprised sound. "You managed to block it on only the second attempt? As expected of you, Hinamori-kun." Unohana had anticipated Wayne would need to die at least five times before he could react to that same slash. His actual performance far exceeded her expectations. It made her feel she hadn't chosen wrong.

"Being able to block that means you're already qualified to learn swordsmanship from me. From here on, I won't be holding back."

"Nothing would please me more." Wayne climbed to his feet. "Please, Captain, be sure to — urk!"

Before he could finish, a long blade sliced across his neck. A cold, faint pressure. He had just started to wonder what the sensation was when the world spun, and his consciousness dropped into darkness. He lost all signs of life.

"No matter what, you must not let your attention wander, Hinamori-kun."

Wayne revived. The memory of being beheaded lingered sharp and clear.

It's completely too fast to see, he thought. Then: since I can't see it, I might as well stop trying to look.

He closed his eyes beneath his sunglasses.

He had always worn them to conceal the movement of his eyes. This time, he intended to fight on nothing but raw perception. It was one of the most fundamental ways to improve his physical capabilities.

Eyes shut. Reiatsu perception opened wide.

Wayne sensed Unohana's killing intent, faint, almost imperceptible. Not intense. There was a playful edge to it, almost amused. That made sense. Her killing of Wayne, aside from helping him train, was purely for her own enjoyment.

That kind of killing intent was what he should expect. If the day ever came when Unohana's killing intent toward him carried anger, or something purer and more absolute, he probably wouldn't be coming back.

CLANG!

The same backstab. But this time, Wayne felt the killing intent clearly. A three-dimensional image of Reiatsu took shape in his mind. He parried Unohana's strike, and used the rotational force to bleed off a good portion of her power.

"Interesting." Unohana smiled warmly. "Only your second death, and you can already receive one of my strikes. Not bad."

"Getting beheaded really hurts," Wayne said without any particular expression. "Let's continue, Captain."

"Very well!" The blade he'd just parried snapped back, and then came the storm, a relentless barrage of thrusts. Wayne raised his sword to block. He couldn't stop all of them. He gave ground again and again, enduring the pain, forcing himself to adapt to her rhythm.

Thrust thrust thrust!

Finally, Wayne was driven into a corner with nowhere to retreat. Unohana drove the tip of her blade through his heart, his kidney, his spleen, a hole in each.

"Damn it..." Wayne hissed through the pain. "Captain, just give me a quick—"

Thrust!

The sword pierced through his throat before he could finish the sentence.

That damn woman! Wayne cursed inwardly. Then he surged forward, letting the blade drive all the way through, using the closing distance to slash at Unohana.

Rip...

The cut swept across. Unohana tilted her head upward to dodge, and her blade cleaved Wayne's skull in two. He died on the spot.

Retsu Unohana looked at the young man crumpled on the ground, red and white matter spread across the floor, and frowned, shaking her head slowly. "Fighting to the death is commendable for its courage. But finding a way to stay alive is still better."

And so it went. Wayne and Unohana began a long, grinding journey through battle. Seven days and seven nights. Since the two of them were competing purely in swordsmanship, neither's Reiatsu consumption was particularly high, just the ordinary drain of maintaining physical effort. If anything, Unohana's consumption was actually the greater of the two. She had to maintain her Bankai and keep healing Wayne. By any accounting, she was the one giving without taking. Though it wasn't without reward. She was enjoying herself immensely. The last time she'd had this much fun cutting someone, well, that had also been the last time.

Three days of high-intensity combat, plus endless deaths. Wayne was starting to go numb to it. But his swordsmanship had genuinely improved. He'd gone from being unable to take even a single move, to trading fifty blows back and forth, being pushed back steadily after eighty, and meeting his end somewhere around a hundred.

Aside from the pain of dying, Wayne was genuinely grateful to Retsu Unohana for the combat itself. Every fight taught him something new, and he kept weaving what he learned into his own style. He hadn't won once. But he'd managed to shred her sleeve, and actually scratched her arm. That was no small thing. As the price for that achievement, Unohana wore a deeply amused smile and proceeded to slice him to pieces again and again, as though she were specifically building his tolerance for pain.

"That's enough, Hinamori-kun. We can rest now."

"Hah... hah... Th-thank you, Captain." Wayne lay flat on the ground, body covered in sword wounds. "One last time — please, Captain. Kill me and then heal me."

"Ara, I've already released my Bankai. If I kill you now, I won't be able to bring you back." Unohana's aura receded. The gentle, kind smile returned to her face.

With just a hint of something darker underneath.

"I seem to recall Hinamori-kun hasn't used Kaidō in quite some time. Consider this injury a review." Retsu Unohana smiled and walked toward the door. As she left, she glanced back. "The next time you return from Hueco Mundo, we'll continue our battle." Captain Unohana stepped out with a single Shunpo and was gone, leaving Wayne lying motionless on the ground in a spreading pool of blood.

Wayne:?

I'm free?

He lay there breathing for a long time before enough strength came back to lift his hand. He pressed it to his wounds and began working through them with Kaidō.

Unlike High-Speed Regeneration, Kaidō was ultimately just a bit slow. The research he and Mizusue had done earlier on accelerating rapid Kaidō had led them to a clear conclusion: from a pure speed standpoint, Kaidō had a hard velocity limit. So the two of them had taken a different approach, starting from the contact points themselves. At the same rate, more points meant faster total recovery. That led Wayne to learn how to treat with a single hand: five fingers, five healing Reishi threads, five simultaneous points.

Of course, when facing one large wound, using the whole hand at once was still faster.

By the time every sword wound had closed, it was already midnight. No point going home at this hour, there'd be nothing to eat. Wayne went directly to a sake house instead, and by sheer coincidence, ran into Isshin Shiba there.

"You little brat. You disappear in the blink of an eye for days on end. If I hadn't gone to the 4th Division and asked Seventh Seat Mizusue about you, I'd have had no idea where you were." Isshin Shiba helped himself to the food and drink on the table while pushing two protective charms across to Wayne, one yellow, one blue, each marked with the character for "protection." "I've been waiting two days. You're paying for this meal."

"Of course. It's only right." Wayne smiled and picked them up.

"When a captain-level attack comes and you have no time to react, these activate automatically. Yellow resists physical attacks. Blue resists Mental Shock. Kid, do not do anything too reckless. These two charms cost my family's Barrier Specialists a great deal of effort. And while they can hold against captain-class attacks, they won't hold forever. Against someone at the Old Man's level, count yourself lucky if they buy you a fraction of a second."

"That's already more than enough. I'm deeply grateful, Captain Shiba." Wayne signaled the attendant and ordered a few more dishes.

"You and Captain Unohana went to Muken?" Isshin asked, making conversation.

"Yeah."

"How long did you fight?"

"Just got out."

"Huh?" Isshin Shiba blinked. "Seven days and seven nights?"

"Yeah."

"Then you..." He started to say something and stopped. He was a veteran captain. He knew exactly what Retsu Unohana's Bankai could do, had fought her himself once, and understood the weight of it firsthand. Back then, Unohana had been searching for a Kenpachi successor. In that period, aside from Captain-Commander Yamamoto, she had crossed blades with nearly every captain. Not the newer generation, not Aizen's era, but she had fought Shinji Hirako several times. It wasn't until Kenpachi Zaraki appeared that Retsu Unohana finally sheathed her sword.

And now Wayne had made her draw it again. For seven days and seven nights. How many times had she cut him down?

"You... are you alright? Should I have Miss Isane take a look at you?"

"Captain Shiba, I'm in the 4th Division. Aside from Kidō, I don't fall short of Vice-Captain Isane when it comes to healing." Wayne ordered a bowl of noodles to put something in his stomach, talking between bites.

"No — I'm not asking about physically. I mean..." Isshin Shiba trailed off and shook his head. Looking at the way this young man was wolfing down his food, there probably weren't any psychological issues to worry about. Still. Seven days and seven nights of combat, endless death and revival, and he hadn't cracked. The kid's willpower was something else.

"How was it?" Isshin asked quietly, almost carefully. "Fighting Captain Unohana."

"Extremely rewarding." Wayne took a sip of broth. "Fighting her gave me a new understanding of swordsmanship. I learned that slashes don't have to come straight on — they can trace different trajectories and catch the enemy off guard. You also don't have to trade blow for blow. You can use smaller techniques to strip away an enemy's combat ability faster."

"She used the hidden blade on you?" Isshin went very still.

"Yeah." Wayne said it plainly. "From the twelfth revival onward, she kept using it. The Captain said it was to train my mind and reaction speed."

"Ah..." Isshin Shiba was sweating. He thought back to his own time fighting Retsu Unohana. He was fairly certain it had taken dozens of revivals before her hidden blade had finally gotten him. Which meant the blind young man sitting across from him had already surpassed him in raw combat talent. All that remained was time. Give him enough of it, and completely surpassing him was inevitable.

"The Captain-Commander was right," Isshin said, shaking his head. "The younger generation really is something." He looked at the young man bent over his bowl, noisily slurping noodles, and smiled. The choice he'd made back then, agreeing to protect him, keeping the noble families from causing trouble, no matter how he looked at it, he'd come out ahead.

Though the cost of these two protective charms still hadn't been recouped. He hoped this kid wouldn't let him down.

➤ Next: Setting Out Once More