As the Soul Reapers in front of him surrounded and blocked Aura, Hisagi desperately steadied his breathing in order to calm his thumping heart. Perhaps in reaction to the fact that he had continued to manipulate Kazeshini at a pace that was beyond his limit, Hisagi’s spiritual pressure seemed to billow inside of him until he felt as though all the cells in his entire body were going to rip open.
“Did we…do it?”
Feeling that Tokinada’s spiritual pressure, which had been present until just a moment ago, had vanished, Hisagi lowered his shoulders in relief.
However, a lingering gloom remained in his heart. He had let himself fall into the maelstrom of revenge in the end, hadn’t he? All he had done was kill the man who had caused Tosen despair and who, out of sheer hatred, had stolen the former captain’s life.
…I haven’t got time to think. I need to do something about Aura and Hikone…
Hisagi forcibly changed his mood, but…
“What you have isn’t hate.”
Suddenly, these words he had heard in the past repeated in his head.
“All you have is sentimentality for Kaname Tosen and what he left behind after he disappeared.”
Whose words were those?
“You would do well to remember this…”
“Regardless of whether you have strong resolve—”
Perhaps those recollections were being revived in his mind by Hisagi’s accumulated experiences as a Soul Reaper, in order to serve as a warning.
Back in reality, Muguruma’s angry shout reached Hisagi’s ears.
“Whoa! Hey! Careful, Shuhei! The woman went that way!”
Oh! Did he mean Aura?!
Aura’s spiritual pressure was scarce, so he couldn’t sense her using his spiritual pressure perception. In order to grasp her movements, he opened his eyes in a fluster. As he did so, he remembered the last fragment of the words that had just been reverberating in his mind.
“You cannot defeat the strong simply through sentimentality.”
Hisagi realized those had been Aizen’s words…
…and as he slowly opened his eyes, the blade in front of him shattered almost simultaneously.
≡
“Huh?!”
At the same time that Kyoka Suigetsu’s shikai activated in front of Hisagi’s eyes, the world that had been shown in Muguruma’s and Yoruichi’s eyes shattered, exposing the state of reality. Tokinada’s body, which had been crumpled until that point, and Aura’s body had switched places. Aura, who had been standing in front of Hisagi, had turned into Tokinada.
Looking at Tokinada, who was wearing a strange coat, Yoruichi clucked her tongue.
“A spiritual pressure interception cloak!”
When she saw the cloak that Kisuke Urahara had developed, she immediately realized what had happened. The moment that Tokinada had enveloped them in Senbon Zakura, he had changed places with Aura and invoked Complete Hypnosis. He had made them believe he was Aura and she was him. He made Kazeshini cut through an earthen clump created using Tsuchinamazu and cried out in anguish at the same time but had never actually let go of his sword, not even for a moment.
Then he had made the others believe they saw Aura approaching Hisagi, in order to make them warn him.
While Hisagi continued to stand there in shock, Aura, who had been pretending to be Tokinada crumpled on the ground, slowly stood up.
“That was a terrible thing you did, Lord Tokinada.”
Aura, who really had been on the receiving end of all kinds of attacks from those around her, was entirely unharmed down to her clothes.
“You can’t be hurt by any cuts or Ceros anyway. Don’t complain when all I did was use you as a dummy.” Tokinada’s words reverberated in Hisagi’s ears.
Looking into Hisagi’s eyes, Tokinada said happily, “Good grief, what a pity it is that all your friends are such simpletons.”
Returning to Aura’s side, Tokinada once again swung the flaming blade of Ryujin Jakka and kept those around who had begun to approach him in check.
Snickering, he fired off words deliberately chosen to provoke Hisagi. “Aizen would have easily seen through a trap like this. No, if you just had the prudence of Tosen, he wouldn’t have said anything careless enough to cause you to open your eyes.”
Then he looked up at Kenpachi and Hikone, who were continuing their fierce clash of swords in the sky, and he said to Aura next to him, “Well then, there’s no issue if Hikone can defeat the Kenpachi with their own abilities, but…I suppose I’ll kill everyone here first. Or perhaps I should leave that reporter as a living witness?” Tokinada shrugged, and then, as though another thought had abruptly come to mind, he asked about something else. “Come to think of it, what happened to the Fullbringers that I left to you? I thought Kugo Ginjo was also here?”
“Oh, but you are you. I thought you already knew what happened to them.”
“Based on the reports from the surveillance spirit bugs’ mock brains, I know they seemed to have fought each other, but…what trick did you use to cause that?”
“It was President Yukio’s abilities—after I amplified his powers.”
Static noise ran through the air behind Aura, and a boy showed his face.
“It was a piece of cake. I stuck a virus into my ‘past,’ and when Tsukishima stuck his bookmark in me, I hacked him instead.”
“Oh, so your Fullbring is that powerful then, boy?”
“As long as I’ve got the resources, modding a program is like breathing to me. After that, I just had Tsukishima stick the same virus in the other two.”
As though to prove his words, Ginjo and the others appeared from the static one after another. It was almost as though they had lost their emotions. When he saw them stand expressionlessly like dolls, Tokinada smiled happily.
“I see, I see. He had been a close candidate for the Soul King after Ichigo Kurosaki. At minimum, he will likely be of assistance to the linchpin that maintains the three realms.”