Emiri's Bankai — Zaiga Kyōsai.

Its ability: for a quarter of an hour after activation, Emiri himself was drawn into Enbatsu's covenant system.

He could make a vow to himself, trading a price for an equivalent rule-bound power.

The core factors of the price were Reiatsu and the fulfillment of the promise.

If he vowed to defeat Ulquiorra, he wouldn't directly gain the power to do it. He would receive the maximum assistance his own Reiatsu could provide, nothing more.

If Ulquiorra wasn't defeated within that quarter of an hour, the backlash would fall on Emiri.

This was his Enbatsu, forcing those who spoke to answer for their words. A vow made to yourself still had to be kept. If it couldn't be, the rules collected the price themselves.

Standing before the crushing Reiatsu of Ulquiorra's Segunda Etapa, Emiri had already made his final decision.

He turned his head and called out behind him.

"Hey — you two on the ground!"

"Sir!"

The two Shinigami guards had recovered under Orihime's healing. They forced themselves upright.

Blood from Bala wounds still stained their Shihakushō. Their legs were shaking. But their eyes didn't flinch.

This fight had been beyond them from the start. All they could do was wait for a moment when they might be useful.

"In a moment, put Miss Orihime and me on your backs and run. Don't look back. Toward the World of the Living!"

"Huh?" One of the guards stared at him, mouth open.

"Do you think you can escape?" Ulquiorra raised his right hand. A spear of turquoise lightning began to coalesce.

"Bakudō #4 — Hainawa!"

A spirit-particle rope wrapped in golden light shot from Emiri's hand and wound precisely around Ulquiorra's body.

It wasn't a high-level Bakudō. It was the most basic binding spell, number four. But with Zaiga Kyōsai behind it, golden light pulsed across the rope's surface, and for a brief moment, Ulquiorra's movements stopped.

Ulquiorra looked down at the golden cord. His green eyes were still.

Something like this would take only a moment to break.

But a moment was all he needed.

Emiri seized the gap and pulled back to Orihime's side.

She was kneeling on the sticky, damp stone floor, Shun'ō and Ayame cradled in both hands, her face white.

"I'm sorry, Miss Orihime. Please forgive me."

Emiri crouched down to meet her eyes and said it the way you'd mention something that didn't matter at all.

"Eh? For what?"

Orihime looked up.

"For what I'm about to do!"

Emiri drove his fist into her leg.

The crack of bone rang through the Dangai's cramped space with awful clarity. Orihime's lower leg bent at an angle legs don't bend. She didn't even have time to scream, the pain hit her brain and the world went black, and she dropped onto the sticky, damp stone floor and didn't move.

The two Shinigami guards went rigid. One of them had already wrapped his hand around his hilt, trying to decide whether the Vice Kidō Commander had been possessed.

Ulquiorra's pupils contracted.

He stopped pulling at the Bakudō. He just stared at Orihime on the ground, at the leg Emiri had broken with his own hands.

"Now! Take us and go!"

Emiri gently pushed Orihime's body toward the guards.

The golden light began draining from the arm that held his blade. The Zanpakutō dissolved back into a folding fan, and the delicate orchids on its face bloomed quietly in the ink, the same as always.

The golden patterns across Emiri's body faded fast. His Reiatsu emptied in an instant. It was like every thread of strength had been pulled out of him at once, he fell straight back, and his spine hit the sticky, damp stone floor hard.

Ulquiorra tore through the dissolving Bakudō cord and prepared to Sonído.

Then he found he couldn't move.

Not a Bakudō restraint. Not the coils of Sajō Sabaku. Something more fundamental, as if an invisible rule had tripped inside him the moment he broke his word, and nailed him where he stood.

He looked down at his hands. His fingers wouldn't bend. His joints wouldn't shift. Even the flow of his Reiatsu had grown sluggish under the weight of it.

He looked at Emiri on the ground.

And then he understood.

The covenant he had made, to bring Miss Orihime away unharmed.

The word that mattered wasn't bring. It was unharmed.

He hadn't touched Orihime himself. But the rule didn't care whose hands had done it.

Orihime had been seriously hurt. Here in this stretch of the Dangai, in this fight between Ulquiorra and Emiri, her leg had been broken.

Ulquiorra had failed to keep his promise.

Enbatsu activated.

Given the gap between their Reiatsu, the most Emiri could manage was still only this, rendering Ulquiorra immobile.

He had spent everything he had to buy a single moment of stillness.

From the instant Ulquiorra had said come with me, woman, from the instant he had said my mission is to bring you back unharmed, that promise had been carved into Enbatsu's rules.

Emiri had known from the beginning that he couldn't beat Ulquiorra. He had never planned to defeat the 4th Espada in a straight fight.

He had only ever needed to do one thing: make Ulquiorra break his own first promise.

Breaking Orihime's leg with his own hands was the most brutal step in that plan. It was also the most precise.

"Foolish. Even if you run, the moment I break free I will catch you and take your lives." Ulquiorra's voice was the same as it always was, perfectly, utterly flat.

The two guards had already lifted Emiri and Orihime onto their backs.

They ran. They didn't look back. Their boots slapped a rapid rhythm against the sticky, damp stone ground as they sprinted toward the World of the Living.

The Dangai corridor stretched out endlessly behind them.

A light came on behind Ulquiorra.

Not the moonlight of Hueco Mundo leaking through a crack. Not the faint, murky glow that clung to the Dangai's damp walls.

Something purer. More absolute. Unstoppable, like a train's headlamp inside a tunnel, already close by the time you see it.

He turned.

The Kōtotsu.

The Dangai's sweeper. A torrent of spirit particles cycling endlessly through the corridor, consuming everything in its path in the simplest way possible.

Even Ulquiorra in his Segunda Etapa could not withstand the Kōtotsu head-on.

It wasn't an enemy you could fight. It was part of the Dangai itself.

And he was pinned. At the Kōtotsu's speed, there was no time to withdraw.

He stared after the fleeing Shinigami, watching those two figures with the wounded on their backs grow smaller and smaller, and something close to hatred moved through him.

Emiri Tsunayashiro had calculated all of it from the very beginning.

He had calculated the Kōtotsu's sweeping cycle. He had calculated when Enbatsu would pin Ulquiorra in place. He had calculated that the World of the Living was the only way out.

He had aimed with his own life, pulled the trigger with Orihime's leg, and fired the Kōtotsu like a bullet straight into him.

Ulquiorra gathered every drop of his Reiatsu and forced one arm into motion, barely.

His fingers were trembling. Not from fear. The rule was still bearing down on his body.

He was supposed to have had a real fight with that Shinigami's Bankai. Segunda Etapa against Zaiga Kyōsai. Murciélago against Enbatsu. A battle that deserved a place in Las Noches' records.

He hadn't expected it to end like this.

Unwilling to simply accept it, he pulled out a Caja Negación and pressed it into his chest just before the Kōtotsu's light reached him.

The moment the black cube touched his Hollow Hole, the Caja Negación's dimensional space sealed around him completely.

The Kōtotsu's light swallowed that space. The spirit-particle torrent swept through. Under the sweeper's force, the corridor walls came out smooth as glass.

Every trace of sticky residue, gone. The cracks in the stone floor, leveled.

Silence.

Emiri lay limp across the guard's back. The wind howled through the corridor. His companion's breathing was ragged and heavy beside his ear.

His chin rested on the guard's shoulder. Blood was still seeping from the corner of his mouth. His Reiatsu was gone, fully spent, and he couldn't hold the fan anymore. It slipped from his fingers. The other guard caught it without breaking stride.

He looked back at the corridor the Kōtotsu had swept clean. He looked at the empty space where Ulquiorra had been.

His peach-blossom eyes curved into two soft arcs.

He knew the 4th Espada wouldn't die that easily.

But he also knew that right now, in this moment, Orihime was safe. The Grand Kidō Chief's mission was done.

With the last thread of his consciousness, he pressed his cheek against the guard's shoulder.

"Someone will be waiting for us in the World of the Living."

He closed his eyes.

➤ Next: The Visored Army

Chapter 79 - The Visored Army

Emiri opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a long time.

Not the wooden beams of the Seireitei. Not the smooth stone slabs of the Kidō Corps headquarters. This was the Human World's white plaster ceiling, an unlit hanging lamp dangling from its center.

He slowly turned his head. A lion-shaped stuffed doll crouched on the nightstand beside him, black glass-bead eyes locked straight onto his, the stitching at the corners of its mouth crooked and uneven, like it was smiling, or baring its teeth.

"Ah, you're awake!"

"..."

"What's wrong? Still not all the way up?"

"Self-destruct, black dog of Rondanini! Look upon it, burn to nothing, and slit your own throat!"

"Waaaah! What are you doing?! Help!"

Kon launched off the bed. Cords of light snapped around him, and Emiri pinned him flat against the floor with one foot.

The doll's limbs thrashed wildly in the air, its cotton-stuffed body warping under the grip of the Bakudō.

The door flew open.

Tōshirō Hitsugaya stood in the doorway. Rangiku Matsumoto and Renji Abarai were right behind him, and Ichigo Kurosaki was craning his head in from the back to get a look.

Seijūrō stood at the very rear, leaning against the doorframe with a mug of hot cocoa still steaming in his hand.

"Captain Hitsugaya? Ryoka? The Grand Kidō Chief is here too?"

Emiri lifted his foot off Kon and drew the cords of light back into his folding fan.

Kon scrambled on all fours behind Ichigo's legs, two very real tears rolling down the doll's face.

"What kind of incantation was that?! Burning to ashes, slitting throats — that's terrifying! QAQ"

Once he'd calmed down, Emiri pieced together what had happened.

Here in the Human World, the advance team under Tōshirō Hitsugaya had barely managed to drive back four invading Arrancar. After that, they'd rendezvoused with the survivors who'd clawed their way out of the Dangai. The Grand Kidō Chief had since arrived from Soul Society and received a full report on the battle.

Their current location was the Karakura Town temporary operations command, otherwise known as Ichigo Kurosaki's bedroom.

A map of Karakura Town was spread across the desk. Beside it, portable Reishi sensors hauled over from the Technological Development Bureau were stacked in a heap.

"I see."

Emiri pushed himself upright on the sofa and looked toward Seijūrō. "Actually, Grand Kidō Chief, I have something I need to tell you."

"I already know about Ulquiorra Cifer's Resurrección: Segunda Etapa. You did well."

"No, it's not that. Could you ask everyone else to step outside?"

Hitsugaya shrugged. He had seen this kind of confidential-debriefing scene more times than he could count in the Gotei 13. He waved a hand at Rangiku and the others, and they filed out.

Ichigo stayed exactly where he was, orange hair bristling, brows jammed together.

"Ryoka. You too."

"Huh? This is my house!"

"Isn't this the Human World command center?"

"This is my room!"

Orihime Inoue walked over, took his arm, and gently tugged.

Her leg was already completely healed, Sōten Kisshun's restorative power had mended the bone Emiri had broken the moment they got back to the Human World.

She smiled and nudged Ichigo toward the door. "Come on. He just got here, it really isn't convenient for him to go anywhere else right now."

Emiri glanced at Orihime, then at her fully intact leg.

She noticed his gaze, gave a small nod, stuck her tongue out, and mouthed, "Thank you."

Once everyone was gone, only Seijūrō and Emiri were left in the room.

"So. What's the bigger discovery?"

"My Bankai, Zaiga Kyōsai. As long as my Reiatsu is large enough, it can do a great many things. Including a one-to-one replication of someone else's abilities."

"Ah, Bankai, Bankai. How nice. Everyone's got a Bankai these days."

"That's not the point! You've been acting completely off ever since you got back from Hueco Mundo, where is your head?! And why are you drinking hot cocoa?! You never touch that stuff!" Emiri's fan cracked against the coffee table. The cup shook, water sloshing inside.

"Keep going."

"In the middle of my fight with Ulquiorra Cifer, I panicked and replicated Getsuga Tenshō. The way I saw it, that technique doesn't cost too much, it doesn't have many rule-based constraints. It's just raw sword-aura Reiatsu." Emiri flipped his fan open again, the ribs spinning idly between his fingertips.

"It really is a convenient technique. Ichigo uses it constantly. Seems like a Shiba Clan heirloom move, though the rest of the family hardly ever pulled it out."

"But, Grand Kidō Chief."

Emiri's fan went still.

He looked into Seijūrō's eyes, calm and deep like the bottom of a lake, and said it one word at a time: "The Getsuga Tenshō I replicated did not contain a single trace of Shinigami Reishi."

"Ah, you mean Hollow? We did suspect that Ichigo Kurosaki had been exposed to Aizen's—"

"It wasn't Hollow either."

Emiri cut him off.

The living room went quiet.

The television's standby light blinked steadily. In the kitchen, a faucet that hadn't been turned all the way off let water drip into the stainless steel sink in a slow, rhythmic tap.

"...Understood. Step out for now. Stay in the Human World for the time being, and find Rangiku later to get a Gigai."

"What about the Kidō Corps, "

"Aoki and the others are holding things together. Honestly, the Kidō Corps doesn't need us around much on ordinary days. It's just been busier since the merger with the Gotei 13."

Emiri pushed the door open and stepped out. Hitsugaya and Rangiku's voices drifted in from the hallway, and then the front door clicked shut.

The room went quiet again.

Seijūrō sat in his chair and took a sip of hot cocoa.

"So. You slept with a Quincy, then let the kid get tainted by Hollow for no apparent reason. What exactly are you after? Synthesizing a Soul King?"

The closet door in the corner of the living room slid open.

Isshin Kurosaki stepped out scratching his head, an awkward smile on his face.

He couldn't figure out what to do with his hands. He finally shoved them into his pockets. His shoulders pulled slightly inward, and in that moment he looked exactly like a student dragged from the back row of a classroom to stand in front of the class.

"Isshin Shiba. You've built yourself a pretty comfortable life in the Human World, haven't you? Kids, a happy home."

Seijūrō stood up and walked toward him.

"Where did you put your wife? Bring her out, I'd like to meet her. It's not as if I haven't met a Quincy or two before."

"Masaki... she passed away. Years ago now."

"...Is that so."

"Time really flies. You're even the Grand Kidō Chief now." Isshin laughed softly. "But honestly, you were always cut out for it."

He scratched the back of his head. That smile, wide and easy with just a trace of effort underneath, was identical to Kaien Shiba's.

"Ichigo doesn't know."

"...Yeah."

"When are you planning to tell him?"

"For now..." Isshin looked down at the worn slippers on his feet. "I'll take it one step at a time."

"Huh? Where are you going?" Isshin blinked as Seijūrō pushed open the door and walked out. "Aren't you going to keep questioning me? Hey — hey, hey, hey — you're not going to contact Central 46, are you? Say something! Hey! Hey!"

On the outskirts of Karakura Town, there was a warehouse that nobody would look at twice.

The paint on the exterior walls had long since peeled away, leaving mottled, rusted sheet metal exposed underneath. Rusted oil drums and a pile of wooden pallets that had been sitting there for who knew how long cluttered the entrance.

The barrier Hachigen Ushōda had erected wrapped the building inside layer after layer of sensory shielding.

"Ugh, I'm starving! Why hasn't that baldy brought food back yet!"

Hiyori Sarugaki was draped across the old sofa, both legs propped up on the armrest swinging back and forth, her stomach issuing one long, drawn-out growl.

"We cannot starve to death."

Hachigen Ushōda looked up from the corner, his round, substantial frame seated cross-legged on a worn-out cushion. He had a stick he'd picked up from somewhere and was tracing complex Kidō runes across the floor.

"Shut it, Hachi! Then why are you so fat?"

"That really does hurt, you know."

Hachigen turned and made a show of wiping a tear from his cheek.

Then he stood up suddenly. The stick fell from his hand. Every trace of the smile on his round face vanished all at once.

He fixed his eyes on the stone steps leading out of the warehouse. His brow pulled tight, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a murmur.

"What is it? Did baldy come back?" Hiyori swung her legs off the armrest and sat up.

"No. Someone has broken through my barrier. And their technique..." He paused. "It surpasses mine."

Hachigen's voice landed heavily in the hollow of the old warehouse.

Kensei Muguruma moved to the front, his solid frame cutting across the space between the others and the entrance, one hand raised near his face, ready to don his mask at any second. His short white hair caught the weak light inside the warehouse. Through the open collar of his Shihakushō, the "69" tattoo was just barely visible.

Lisa set her book on the sofa and stood, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

Mashiro Kuna crouched beside Hiyori, head tilted, watching the stone steps.

Rōjūrō Ōtoribashi leaned against the steel support pillar, his long golden hair neatly bound at the back of his neck. His slender fingers tapped against the hilt of his sword, slow and unhurried.

Love Aikawa rolled his neck. His joints cracked.

Hachigen's breathing stuttered. The barrier he had built was being peeled back layer by layer, each one dissolving without the slightest resistance, as though it were nothing.

The warehouse door made no sound at all.

Only a breath of wind pushed through the gap, just enough to set Hiyori's feet swaying where they hung over the armrest.

Footsteps came up the stone stairs.

Steady. Unhurried.

"You?"

➤ Next: Eel Rice Balls, Ruins, and Unfinished Vengeance