Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 338 - The World Collapses

Chapter 338, The World Comes Apart

"Lord Wayne, we have returned."

Nine minutes. Not one more, not one less. All the Law Inheritors arrived at the 12th Division, and they brought the ground with them, covered in Quincy corpses. Aside from the few members Yhwach had taken up to the Soul King Palace, the rest had been slaughtered to the last by the Vasto Lorde-class Hollows. The Quincy remnants in Soul Society were completely, utterly annihilated. On the other hand, Yhwach's power would grow stronger for it.

Not that Wayne's actions were necessarily a bad thing. Feeding Yhwach's strength now was far better than letting him suddenly surge mid-fight and heal his wounds at the worst possible moment.

And it saved a lot of division members. For Soul Society, that counted for something.

"Toss the corpses in here — let Szayelaporro have his fun." Wayne casually tore open a spatial rift and waved the Hollows to dump the pile inside. He noticed Mayuri Kurotsuchi's sharp gaze almost immediately and set a few bodies aside as a gift.

"Leave the zombie-controller to me." Mayuri pointed at what remained of Giselle, blown to pieces by Starrk. "Quite a few division members were zombified. Several captains too. I need to study the blood and see if a serum is possible."

"Sure." Wayne tossed Giselle's remains in front of him without looking.

"By the way — are these really all the people heading to the Soul King Palace? No additions?"

Wayne looked over the assembled group. Captain-class: Soifon, Shinji Hirako, Kenpachi Zaraki, Jushiro Ukitake, Shunsui Kyōraku, Byakuya, Shiro-chan, Kisuke Urahara. Lieutenant-class: Yumichika Ayasegawa, Ikkaku Madarame, Rukia Kuchiki, Renji Abarai, Momo.

"Everyone else is occupied with their duties," Shunsui Kyōraku said. "It's the decisive battle, yes, but they can't leave their posts right now. Otherwise I wouldn't have had to go searching for Sōsuke Aizen myself. Lucky that Wayne here handled Soul Society's crisis. All that's left now is the Soul King Palace."

"Mm. Then let's get ready to move." Wayne glanced back at the Law Inheritors. "I'm bringing these few on my side." He pointed at the group behind him. "The rest of my subordinates — I've already had Timd notify them to assemble at a designated point in Soul Society. They'll wait for my next orders."

"Oh? Not pulling them back?"

"Take a guess." Wayne grinned. "You think Yhwach might come back swinging? Better to be safe. Don't worry — as long as your people don't lose their heads and pick a fight with them, they won't touch the Seireitei."

"Mm." Shunsui Kyōraku lowered his head with a murmur, whether agreement or thought, it was hard to say.

"In that case, let's move." Kisuke Urahara pointed at the gate taking shape nearby.

"Mr. Wayne, please have your group take these Reishi Orbs as well. They're essential for reaching the Soul King Palace. However, with eight additional people on your side, we may need to reduce the count on ours. In such a short time, we simply can't manufacture enough for everyone..."

"I'll just fly them up."

"I'm afraid that won't work." Urahara opened his fan to cover his mouth, the smile behind it audible in his voice. "The entire path between Soul Society and the Soul King Palace is blanketed in barriers. Mr. Kurosaki broke through them on his way down, but they've largely regenerated since. And without specific coordinates, Mr. Wayne, I don't imagine you can teleport there directly either — can you?"

"Yasutora Sado and Orihime Inoue are up there, aren't they?"

"That's true, they went with Mr. Kurosaki... Ah. I forgot." The mild trap Urahara had set collapsed the moment he remembered. Wayne knew both Sado and Orihime well. There was no reason he wouldn't have placed spatial markers on them long ago. "My miscalculation."

"As for the regenerated barriers..." Wayne tilted his head back, looked up at the sky, then raised his right hand and extended one finger.

The next second, waves of Reiatsu strong enough to shake the earth began to surge. Every Soul Reaper present took an involuntary step back. A beam of spiritual energy condensed at Wayne's fingertip, pulsing with a faint blue glow, and the Reishi in the air around him flowed steadily inward, feeding it.

"Big brother's Reiatsu, how is it already..." Shiro-chan snapped his Bankai open without hesitation, ice dragon wings spreading to shield Momo behind him.

"Big brother's Reiatsu has probably surpassed the Captain-Commander's by now." Momo stood behind Shiro-chan and braced against the shockwave with her own hand raised. "I've never felt this much power from the Captain-Commander."

"This guy..." Shunsui Kyōraku pulled his hat brim down and stepped in front of Nanao Ise, one hand out. "If it ever actually came to a fight, how would we even begin? There's no chance of winning. None."

"Interesting." Kenpachi Zaraki licked his lips. "I'm starting to want a piece of you."

"After Yhwach is dead." Wayne glanced at him sideways and said nothing more.

Wayne finished charging. A Cero vast enough to blow the roof off the world shot skyward, straight up, no deviation, piercing the clouds and swallowing them whole. Then came the sounds: barrier after barrier shattering in sequence, each crack like a thunderclap, each one shaking something loose in the chest. Looking up along the Cero's path, it was as if a broken corridor had been hammered through the sky, linking Soul Society to the Soul King Palace.

The Cero detonated at the far end in a brilliant burst, a firework against the heavens.

BOOM!

The instant it faded, the earth lurched.

The ground split and crumbled inch by inch. Buildings collapsed in roaring cascades. Soul Society plunged into something that looked very much like the end of everything.

"What's happening?!" Faces went pale across the assembled group as the ground broke apart beneath them.

"Hey, Hinamori." Ikkaku was the first to shout, and he did it with zero filter. "Did you just break the world?"

"Hardly." Wayne gave him a flat look. "This tremor isn't from me."

"Not you? Then who?"

"The Soul King." Urahara's eyes were fixed on the sky, heavy with something grim. "The Soul King... is dead."

"What?!"

Every person present froze. For a moment they forgot entirely about the ground shaking beneath their feet.

"How is that possible?! What is Squad Zero doing? What about Ichigo?!" Shinji's face was open disbelief. So many people guarding the Soul King, how could it have fallen this fast?

"I don't know. But it's not impossible." Urahara's voice was quiet, its usual brightness gone. "Squad Zero eliminated. Mr. Kurosaki didn't make it in time. Given the timeline... it's plausible."

"Is there still time to stop Yhwach?! Is there anything we can do?!" Renji's voice cut through the noise. "Is there nothing left?!"

"Find someone to replace the Soul King."

Wayne said it like he was suggesting lunch.

Everyone looked at him.

"The Soul King was never whole to begin with," he continued. "Even now that the current one is dead, if we locate the remaining surviving parts and substitute them in, it can work." As he said it, his gaze shifted to Jushiro Ukitake standing quietly to the side.

"Isn't that right, Captain Ukitake?"

Following Wayne's gaze, so did everyone else. Ukitake stood there as if he had already arrived at a decision. When he opened his mouth, his voice was calm.

"Yes. I... can serve as the Soul King's substitute."

The words settled. Behind him, a pitch-black shadow rose slowly from his back. In the shifting darkness, a single vertical eye opened without a sound.

"That kind of thing is really..."

"I will explain later." Ukitake's tone left no room for argument. He didn't say more. He quietly removed his captain's haori, revealing the shadow spread across his back like a tattoo. He drew his Zanpakutō, and when he spoke, his voice was low and steady.

"Lord Mimihagi, please discard my internal organs and release the power of the sacred eye hidden deep within them."

"Ooo..."

A deep resonant hum answered him. The shadow woven from Ukitake's blood and Reiatsu slowly solidified, not into something monstrous but into something ancient: a single arm-shaped vessel, and at the center of its back, one enormous eye. Mimihagi, in its true form. The moment it fully emerged, the visible decline in Ukitake's condition was immediate. The color left his face entirely.

"Lord Mimihagi." Urahara looked at Ukitake, whose face was now the white of old paper, and spoke quietly. "I've heard the name. A local deity, renowned once at the far reaches of the Rukongai."

"Yes." Ukitake's voice was thin now, barely carrying. "Lord Mimihagi originates from the 76th District of East Rukongai. A deity that offers up everything but its eyes, and in return, protects." He paused, then continued with what strength remained. "And in ancient times, legend says this deity descended from the heavens as an offering enshrined to the Soul King's right arm. Which means that right now, I am the Soul King's right arm."

"By offering up your internal organs, you've become Mimihagi's vessel," Wayne said, "and through that, the nominal right arm of the Soul King. The collapse of the three worlds can be temporarily stabilized."

"Correct..." Ukitake's gaze turned faintly cold. "Captain Hinamori. You seem very well-informed about my affairs. Is that why you've been so calm through all of this?"

"No." Wayne shook his head. "I learned about the Soul King through studying the Hōgyoku. That's all. But rather than standing here questioning me, before the world finishes destroying itself, I'd suggest you focus on stabilizing it. We'll go deal with Yhwach and find a way to hold the three worlds together. If this works, there might still be a chance for you to survive."

"No need for that." Ukitake shook his head slightly. A thin line of blood came with it. "I know my own body. To die in the end for the Gotei, I'm at peace with that." His voice steadied for just a moment. "But I am asking you. You must repel Yhwach. Restore peace to the three worlds."

He looked directly at Wayne.

"Ace Wayne... I'm entrusting this to you."

BOOM!

The words were barely out before the shadow at his back shot skyward. In the same instant, Ukitake's body was emptied, Reiatsu and vitality stripped out of him at once, leaving him withered and desiccated, a shell that barely resembled a living person.

With the stripping of his power, the collapse slowed. Then steadied.

"That should buy some time," Wayne said, sensing the shift settle through Soul Society. "But it won't hold indefinitely. We move now."

"Then we'll be in your hands, Wayne." Shunsui Kyōraku adjusted his hat brim low. He said nothing more about Ukitake. His face said enough. Though it was only a conclusion he'd reached on his own, Kyōraku had been watching, and what he'd seen was a man who had stalled, who had waited with apparent calm while a captain-class soul burned himself down to nothing. A man who showed no fear of Yhwach whatsoever. That left only one interpretation.

Wayne had been waiting. Waiting for the moment where acting would yield the most. The death of the Soul King, the collapse of the three worlds, Kyōraku hadn't known. But his ignorance didn't mean Wayne's.

And now that Wayne held the Hōgyoku, Kyōraku couldn't read him at all anymore. Did that mean Wayne's power had already touched the level of the Soul King himself?

He stopped that line of thought before it finished. Right or wrong, it didn't change anything. Wayne had become a force in Soul Society that nothing here could match. That was the fact he had to live with.

"Mm. Is this everyone confirmed for the ascent?" Wayne looked over the group.

"There may be additional reinforcements available," Urahara said, hands already working on the Senkaimon technique. "But please, go ahead now. I'll send the next wave up afterward. Mr. Wayne, may you return victorious."

"Mm." Wayne nodded once, then swept his left hand through the air. A dark spatial rift split open before the assembled group. Twisted spatial force bled out from its edges in slow, warping tendrils.

"Move out."

"Yes, my King!" The Hollows stepped through without hesitation. The Soul Reapers stood where they were, looking at each other, at the rift, at the void beyond it.

"Whatever else is true, the three worlds cannot collapse." Shiro-chan was the first to move. His trust in Wayne had no conditions. If the other side of that rift was hell, he'd walk into it the same way. He stepped forward.

Byakuya Kuchiki said nothing. He fell in beside Shiro-chan without ceremony, and in the moment just before stepping through, he turned his head slightly toward Rukia.

"Let's go, Rukia."

"Yes, big brother!" She pulled herself together and followed him into the rift.

"We don't know each other that well." Shinji picked at his ear. "But right now, trust is what I've got." A single Shunpo carried him through. The surviving Visored exchanged a look, then followed.

"Come on, Little Nanao." Shunsui Kyōraku's gaze sharpened. He walked toward the rift without breaking stride.

"But, Captain-Commander..." Nanao shifted her form of address deliberately, the change the only argument she let herself make. He was the Captain-Commander. Was this a risk he should be taking?

"Yhwach must be defeated." He didn't look back. "For the Gotei. For Soul Society."

He stepped through.

"And for... that idiot Ukitake."

➤ Next: Wayne vs. Yhwach