Byakuya Kuchiki drew Senbonzakura beneath the moonlight. He did not release his Shikai — after studying under Seijūrō, he had realized his Senbonzakura was ill-suited for countering Kidō.

The blade slid from its scabbard with a crisp, cold ring, like a sheet of thin ice dropping onto gravel. He said nothing more. His captain's haori was back at the Kuchiki manor; tonight he wore only plain clothes, his black hair pinned neatly behind his head with the kenseikan. Wind swept through the ruins of Inuzuri and tugged at the hem of his robe. He stood in the shadow of a broken wall, pale violet eyes fixed unblinking on the woman across from him.

Mahiru Tokito stood a dozen paces away, her outer robe snapping in the wind. In the moonlight, the dip-dyed strands of dark red and amber in her hair looked like two intertwined Kidō trajectories. The grass stem at the corner of her mouth was fresh, but the lazy smile was gone. She raised her right hand, spread her fingers, and Reiatsu condensed in her palm into a sphere of pale blue light. No incantation. Hadō #88, Hiryūgekizokushintenraihō, fired straight out. The beam was thick enough to swallow a person whole. It plowed a deep scorch channel across the gravel, and the air filled with the acrid stench of burnt ozone. Byakuya was already gone. The beam punched through the space where he had been standing and blasted a clean hole through the ruined wall behind him. Stone and dust rained from the edges.

He had moved before she fired. The toe of his foot ground a shallow pit into the gravel, Reiatsu detonating with precision beneath his sole, and his body cut into the blind spot on her left flank at a razor-narrow angle. Hadō #1, Shō, fired from his fingertip, aimed not at her but at the ground just in front of her left foot. Seijūrō had taught him that. Gravel sprayed. She stepped back half a pace by reflex, and the second Hadō gathering in her right hand broke off for a fraction of a second.

She frowned. As she retreated, her left hand flung out Hadō #31, Shakkahō. The fireball trailed an orange-red plume that cut off his angle of approach. Byakuya didn't force through it. His toe tapped the gravel and his body redirected right; the Shakkahō grazed past his back and detonated against a stone pillar behind him. She seized the opening, replanted her feet, and raised both hands at once: Hadō #54, Haien from her left, Hadō #63, Raikōhō from her right. Both fired almost simultaneously. The dark red burst from the Haien spread low across the ground in a fan, baking everything directly in front of Byakuya into a semi-molten dark red state. The gold lightning of the Raikōhō sealed the space above him and shut down any jumping route. This wasn't simple firepower suppression. She was weaving a net. Every Kidō's position, angle, and timing precisely restricted where he could move, like a hand quietly drawing a cordon tighter across a board.

Byakuya didn't retreat. Bakudō #81, Dankū, unfolded before him. The translucent barrier caught the oncoming Haien and the flames crashed against it in a wave of dark red fire, splitting and flowing away along both flanks. Behind the Dankū, he chained 2 consecutive Shunpo, using the cover of the flaming wave to cut back in from her right. His right hand pressed against the hilt of Senbonzakura, not to draw, but for Bakudō. Bakudō #61, Rikujōkōrō, fired from the void. Six bands of light converged on her torso. Mahiru Tokito didn't dodge. She raised her right hand and fired Hiryūgekizokushintenraihō again; the beam shattered 4 of the bands. But in the instant she shattered them, Byakuya had already circled from her right to her direct rear. Hadō #4, Byakurai, leveled from his left hand, aimed straight at the back of her neck.

She didn't turn around. She simply flung her left hand backward. Hadō #1, Shō, fired from her fingertip and collided with the Byakurai. Two shockwaves detonated between them, blasting gravel and dust high into the air. She used the recoil to leap forward several paces, opening distance again, and raised both hands. Hadō #73, Sōren Sōkatsui. Blue-white conflagration rippled outward in every direction with her at the center, the entire ruin warping under the heat. This was no ordinary Sōkatsui, a dual-lotus blast at the seventy-third rank, coverage wide enough to swallow an entire squad. Even as the blast erupted, she chained into Hadō #63, Raikōhō, golden lightning chasing the spreading perimeter and sealing off every avenue of retreat.

Byakuya chose not to retreat. A fraction of a second before the blast reached him, Hadō #33, Sōkatsui, fired from his fingertip, not at Mahiru Tokito but at the ground under his own feet. The recoil launched him into the air, clearing the expanding plane of the dual-lotus explosion. He flipped, tapped a toe off the top of a half-collapsed stone pillar, and dropped vertically from above. Bakudō #61, Rikujōkōrō, fired again, 6 bands descending from the sky. Mahiru raised her hand to shatter them with Kidō. But Byakuya had already used the scatter of shattered light as cover and landed right in front of her. His right hand pressed against the hilt of Senbonzakura.

This time, it was a real draw.

The blade slid free, cold silver gleaming in the moonlight. The edge swept horizontally toward her left shoulder. She shifted sideways; it grazed past her outer robe and sheared off a lock of her dip-dyed hair. She backhanded a Hadō #54, Haien, that forced Byakuya back and widened the gap. The severed hair fell onto the gravel. She glanced down at the few dark red strands, caught her breath, and straightened up. Byakuya landed several paces away, the tip of Senbonzakura angled toward the ground.

She raised both hands again. Hiryūgekizokushintenraihō fired for the third time. Byakuya dodged sideways; the beam grazed his robe and detonated against the ruins behind him. She didn't stop: Hadō #31, Shakkahō, in rapid bursts, chasing his landing points and forcing him to keep changing direction in midair. Even as he shifted, Byakuya fired back without pause. Byakurai struck in front of her feet, cutting off her next incantation; Rikujōkōrō sealed her flanking routes; Shō struck the tips of her fingers where her Reiatsu was gathering and sent a Raikōhō that should have spread wide veering off course.

He never gave her a chance to plant her feet.

Every time she tried to pull back, he used Bakudō to break her chanting. Every time she wound up to loose a wide-range Hadō, he used Byakurai to strike the exact node where her Reiatsu was gathering. Every time she tried to reclaim the rhythm, he used Shunpo to cut into her blind spot and force her to move again.

Her rhythm was being taken apart piece by piece. She was struggling. Not from lack of spiritual power, it was the tempo of her Hadō that kept getting broken. Every disruption forced a footing readjustment. Every readjustment forced a distance recalculation. Every recalculation gave Byakuya another opening to close in. The pace between them climbed faster and faster, and she knew it clearly: he was the one controlling this rhythm. Not her.

This was the inherent weakness of a traditionalist Kidō practitioner.

She weathered several more rounds of his alternating Hadō and Bakudō. Scorched tips of her long dip-dyed hair scattered across her shoulders; her outer robe had taken burn marks from Byakurai in several spots. Once, instead of retreating, he pressed forward, raised his hand for Rikujōkōrō, and she countered by using Shakkahō to detonate the light bands along with the air behind her, seized the gap in the explosion to layer both hands into a Hiryūgekizokushintenraihō that ripped clean through the ruins. Byakuya evaded and was driven back several paces. She regained solid footing, carpeted the ground with Haien to block his paths, and dragged the fight back into the long-range suppression she knew best.

But through all that probing, Byakuya had already mapped every habit in how she wove her firepower.

The next time he moved in, he dropped the alternating Hadō-and-Bakudō entirely. The instant she started rebuilding her net, he closed the distance with Shunpo and drove the edge of Senbonzakura diagonally at her wrist. She was forced to abort and met the spine of the blade with her elbow, deflecting the strike half an inch. Byakuya immediately changed attacks. His other hand fired Hadō #4, Byakurai, at point-blank range into her right forearm. Lightning exploded across her arm. A large section of her sleeve charred black; a dark red scorch mark seared into the skin beneath. A muffled grunt escaped her. Senbonzakura followed right behind, slicing diagonally across her chest. Her outer robe and the Shihakushō beneath parted together, drawing a line from below her collarbone down to the side of her waist. The blood didn't gush. It seeped, a neat row of dense red beads welling slowly along the clean cut, then running down her skin and soaking half her robe crimson.

She stumbled back several paces, her back hitting a half-collapsed wall. Panting, she raised her left hand, the one still mobile, and fired Shakkahō in rapid succession to seal off his pursuit as the wall crumbled under the blasts. Before the residual flames had cleared, she followed up immediately with Hiryūgekizokushintenraihō. The pale blue beam swept low across the ground and melted all the gravel between them into a straight trench. The recoil launched her off the wall. She tumbled into a patch of weeds at the edge of the thicket, her back striking dry branches with a dull crack. She struggled to roll over and got one knee under her. Her robes were soaked through. Byakuya stood at the far end of the trench, watching her across still-molten gravel and air bent by heat.

Blood still seeped through the fingers pressed to her chest. Scraps of her outer robe and severed dip-dyed hair lay scattered across the gravel at her feet. Byakuya's blade pressed in again. Slashing strikes, Hadō, Bakudō, relentless, alternating. A Bakudō sealed her retreat, immediately followed by a diagonal slash aimed at her left wrist before she could raise it. She was half a beat late answering the Bakudō. The blade grazed the back of her hand and sheared through the cuff of her outer robe. Blood welled from her hand and dripped from her fingertips onto the gravel.

She finally gave up on rebuilding the net. She bent down, picked up the broken grass stalk from the ground, tossed it aside, and slapped the gravel with her one still-functional hand. A short-range spatial transfer formula hidden inside her sleeve activated. Her body traced an irregular sequence of blinks, hopping several times before coming down beside a patch of withered brambles at the edge of the Inuzuri ruins. She hit the ground hard. The dry thorns tore more gaps in her outer robe; her long dip-dyed hair spilled loose across her shoulders. She shoved herself up with one arm and frantically searched the grass.

The communication device. Just reach it, just reach it and she'd make it. Aizen and the others, they'd come.

Had it dropped somewhere along the way? Had Byakuya's Bakudō knocked it loose? Had it flown out of her sleeve in that rapid chain of displacements? Her mind tore through every possible landing point. Her fingers found cold damp soil. Dry roots. A half-shattered stone. Nothing else.

Footsteps behind her. Light, steady, the same unhurried cadence across the gravel as before. She rolled over, back against the withered brambles, and looked up at Byakuya standing over her. Moonlight fell across his face. In those pale violet eyes there was no anger, no satisfaction, none of the emotions that should have belonged to someone with his reasons for being here. He simply looked at her. The tip of Senbonzakura rested less than an inch from her throat.

"Bankai: Senbonzakura Kageyoshi."

➤ Next: Minced Tokito — The Conversation

Chapter 39 - Minced Tokito — The Conversation

The courtroom of Central 46 was lit by reishi lamps, their cold white glow falling from the domed ceiling onto blue-gray flagstones and the forty-six tiered seats arranged in ascending rows. Forty sages and six judges, all in dark robes, faces hidden beneath hoods, only their eyes showed, aged and sharp.

Isshin Shiba stood at the front of the spectator gallery. His white captain's haori was scorched and torn, a gash on his left cheek still seeping blood, a wide patch of cloth on his right shoulder burned away entirely. Rangiku Matsumoto and Tōshirō Hitsugaya stood behind him, neither of them at ease, Rangiku had bitten a shallow red mark into her lower lip, and Tōshirō's brow was furrowed so hard it could crush a fly. Isshin's gaze moved past the bench and settled on the dock. His face held neither a victor's satisfaction nor a loser's bitterness. Just something complicated. The kind of thing a person probably couldn't explain even to themselves.

Byakuya Kuchiki stood in the dock with his spine perfectly straight, the kenseikan pinned neatly in his hair and his torn captain's haori gathered tidily at his side. He held a transparent glass jar with both hands. It was filled with dark-red minced meat that glistened in the cold white light. His posture was exactly as steady as when he stood before the window of the Squad 6 barracks, as though this were nothing more than routine business.

Seijūrō sat on the flagstone floor beside him. Not because he didn't want to stand. The fight against Isshin had wrung him dry, his legs still trembling, the bruise from slamming his knees into the gravel showing dark purple below the hem of his trousers. A large section of his plain gray sleeve had burned away. The wound at his right temple was still seeping. His breath came heavy and slow. He had his back against the stone railing of the dock, one knee drawn up, arm resting over it, the posture of someone who had just finished a run with no visible end and was finally allowed to sit down.

He turned his head and looked at the jar in Byakuya's hands. His throat moved. His voice came out rough, like something scraped with sandpaper.

"How did you manage that? In that amount of time... minced into paste?"

Byakuya did not look down. His light-purple eyes stayed fixed forward. "My Bankai. Hundreds of millions of blades minced her alive."

Seijūrō was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned back and let one corner of his mouth pull up. "...You really are something."

The judge in the central seat began to read the charges. A flat, aged voice filled the circular chamber, slaughtering comrades, destroying barriers, assaulting the Squad 10 Captain, conspiring with traitors, attempting to frame the former Grand Kidō Chief. Every count was enough for execution. Seijūrō sat with his head down, a thin thread of smoke still rising from his charred sleeve. Then his mouth curved.

"...So slow."

The judge's voice stopped.

Every pair of eyes in the courtroom fell on the side of Seijūrō's face, smeared with blood and grime and unmistakably smiling. No one understood why.

Then the courtroom doors were rammed open.

The heavy wooden doors burst apart in both directions. Splinters tumbled through the cold white light. Every gaze in the room, forty-six sages, six judges, every captain and lieutenant in the gallery, swung toward the entrance.

"Again!?" someone at the bench blurted out.

The figure standing in the doorway was Seijūrō Kidōin.

Plain gray robe, black hair, an Asauchi at his waist, expression calm. Identical in every way to the blood-stained Seijūrō sitting on the floor of the dock.

"I have conclusive evidence." The Seijūrō at the entrance walked in, steps steady, voice clear and composed and carrying across the entire hall. "Proof that former Grand Kidō Chief Mahiru Tokito conspired with two sages of Central 46 — Tadakatsu Sato of the Collegial Bench and Shigenori Hayashida of the Inspectorate. These two accepted benefits funneled to them through Mahiru Tokito's reishi extraction scheme. Over the past several decades, they repeatedly exercised their shelving authority during investigations concerning her to prevent the Gotei 13 from intervening in Kidō Corps internal affairs."

The chamber erupted.

Seijūrō on the floor kept his head down. The smile at the corner of his mouth went a little deeper. The Seijūrō standing in the center of the hall raised one hand, holding up a data scroll sealed with complete reishi records, and with the other reached to his collar and tore away a small device.

A barely perceptible ripple of reishi passed through the air. The plain gray robe, the black hair, the face, all of it dissolved. Straight-cut black bangs. Light-gray eyes. A small, compact frame.

Soi Fon stood in her Squad 2 Captain's haori, the data scroll still raised in her hand. Forty-six pairs of eyes fell upon the dense columns of reishi operation logs and communication records. The aged sages went still for a moment, then turned to look at Sato and Hayashida, both of whose faces had gone the color of chalk.

Seijūrō finally looked up. He stared at the device in Soi Fon's hand, his voice hoarse and unbothered.

"Hah. So it wasn't a body double after all~ It's a camouflage device. Building a fully functional double in three days — I mean, come on."

Before the words had fully landed, another voice came from the doorway. Undisguised impatience, and something that sounded faintly like offended pride.

"You don't have to say it like I genuinely couldn't."

Mayuri Kurotsuchi strode in, the hem of his Squad 12 haori dragging softly against the floor. The single long blue nail on his right middle finger caught the cold light and refused to let it go. His black-and-white face paint gave nothing away, but the arrogance in his voice was sharper than anything else in the room. Nemu Kurotsuchi followed a step behind him, carrying a transparent container. Inside it, a complete brain floated in preservation fluid. The blood vessels on the surface of the meninges were still active, the tissue slightly whitened from the soak.

Mayuri stopped in the center of the hall and tapped the container with that blue nail.

"I have a witness. This brain belonged to Mahiru Tokito's informant inside the Technological Development Bureau — the man was already embedded there decades ago, before Kisuke Urahara was exiled. The memories preserved in this brain are complete. Every order Mahiru Tokito ever gave him. Every operation used to falsify reishi monitoring data." He paused, and something like amusement crept into his tone. "What's interesting is that the limbic system shows repeated reishi burn scarring. Someone used an extremely crude method to wash his memory over and over again. Apparently, they didn't want him remembering too much. They just didn't finish the job."

Seijūrō sat in silence for a long moment.

"...You can actually make one of those?"

Mayuri scoffed. "Obviously."

The judge's voice cut through the room from the central seat.

"Squad 2 Captain Soi Fon. You used a transformation device to infiltrate Central 46 and the Kidō Corps, assumed a false identity, and gathered evidence without authorization. These actions constitute a severe violation of Seireitei regulations. Do you acknowledge your crime?"

Soi Fon didn't move. Her small frame stood still under forty-six pairs of aged, watching eyes.

"Infiltrated. Forged. Without authorization." She repeated the words without inflection. No anger in it. Only the cold that remains after everything else has been held back. She raised her head, light-gray eyes locked directly on the hooded shadow in the central seat.

"The Grand Kidō Chief conspired with two of the sages seated in this hall for decades. She drained reishi from souls in the Rukongai, framed the Vice Kidō Chief, and used the Gotei 13 as a weapon. Central 46's oversight procedures were worthless. The collegial shelving power was used as a personal shield. If I hadn't gone in, this evidence would never have ended up in front of you." She brought the data scroll down onto the stone dais beside her with a heavy, flat crack. "You ask if I acknowledge my crime? I would like to ask you something first. Where were the oversight procedures you sages are supposed to run? Where were the vetting procedures of the Collegial Bench? Decades. Dozens of souls. How many shelving orders did Central 46 sign for the Grand Kidō Chief? Don't tell me none of you kept count."

The courtroom was silent except for the faint hum of the reishi lamps.

Soi Fon pulled her hand back and stood straight. Her white Squad 2 haori stood out against the cold white light. She didn't raise her voice, but every word landed cleanly under every hood in the room.

"I broke the rules. But a rule that can almost execute an innocent man today is not worthy of the name. Hold me accountable — I'll accept it. But before any of you do, ask yourselves this: how many more Tadakatsu Satos and Shigenori Hayashidas are sitting in this chamber right now? Have you even looked?"

The silence that followed was long. Not the silence of people convinced. The silence of people who had just been publicly stripped of their composure and couldn't find a way back in.

The judge in the central seat gave a dry cough. His voice was the same, aged, flat, but his cadence had slowed. Every word had a pause after it now, as though each one was being weighed before it left his mouth.

"Central 46's oversight procedures have stood for a thousand years. They exist for a reason. The dereliction of individual sages does not represent the failure of the institution as a whole. The case of Seijūrō Kidōin is of grave consequence. This court must appraise all submitted evidence—"

"Appraising evidence takes time." A second sage cut in, louder, trying to bring the room back under control. "The Grand Kidō Chief was killed on the spot. Her body is barely cold. The testimony of a few individuals and a single brain are not sufficient for a verdict. The court will adjourn for three days. Once all physical evidence has been examined and verified, the trial will resume."

"Three days."

The voice came from the back of the spectator gallery, calm, unhurried, and heavy as stone.

Ginrei Kuchiki stepped out of the shadows. He moved without haste, but every step landed with absolute certainty. Long white hair tied back. Beard reaching his chest. Spine straight as an old pine. He walked to the center of the courtroom and stopped beside Soi Fon, then looked up at the central bench. His eyes were clouded with age. They offered nothing.

"Evidence this complete still requires three days? Do you need three days to test whether the minced meat in that jar is actually the former Grand Kidō Chief?" He held the bench's gaze without flinching. "3 days ago, the Grand Kidō Chief was standing in this courtroom accusing the Vice Kidō Chief. 3 days later, tonight, she is dead in Inuzuri. If you remand Seijūrō Kidōin into custody tonight, will there be another inexplicable prison break in three days?"

Silence fell over the room again.

The empty seats where Sato and Hayashida had been were two ugly gaps in the tiered rows, impossible to look past. The aged sages at the central bench leaned together and argued in low voices. Ginrei's cane came down on the flagstones with a single dull knock.

"Back then, Kisuke Urahara and Iwakizhi Tetsusai were both rescued by Yoruichi Shihōin while remanded and awaiting trial. If Central 46 had moved faster, perhaps Yoruichi Shihōin would never have had to storm this courtroom. Are you going to be slow again?"

Not a sound in the hall except the low hum of the reishi lamps.

The judge in the central seat spoke at last. The same aged voice, the same flat tone, but faster now, the earlier deliberateness gone.

"The court is adjourned for six hours. All evidence will be examined and verified when the session resumes."

➤ Next: Exonerated