“Ha ha…ka ha ha! I see, I see. This is the first time I’ve ever been so cornered.”
Dragging a trail of blood behind him, Tokinada walked through a room of strange gauges.
“Oh well, I suppose this is how far I will let my fun go this time.”
As he started up several of the gauges, Tokinada let his mouth warp into a grin.
“But I will ask that all of you die here.”
Tokinada had equipped the multistoried building with secret weapons. He started to activate the fortress equipment he had prepared as a defense against the humans, which included artillery bombardments that were equal in force to the nuclear weapons from the world of the living and reishi cannons that would diffuse toxins that rivaled Konjiki Ashisogi Jizo, but…
“Hm…?”
None of them would activate.
Though he thought Aura could be the culprit, nothing about the weapons had seemed off recently, and most of the equipment was fitted with alarm systems that would notify Tokinada if any of them had been altered by konpaku manipulation.
As his suspicions rose, a jovial voice that was out of place in the castle echoed within the stronghold from all extant communications devices.
“Oh, hello hello! Why, I suppose it’s my first time meeting you, Mr. Tsunayashiro?”
“Is that you…Kisuke Urahara?!”
“You know, I would always crush any surveillance bugs I found flying around my shop, so I feel like we’ve had a long relationship, Mr. Visual Department.”
≡
Though Hisagi also had deep wounds and was out of breath, when he heard the voice reverberating from the castle in the air, his eyes unintentionally widened.
“That voice… Is that Mr. Urahara?! I thought he’d been kidnapped.”
Yukio interjected from behind. “No way. We invited him as usual. Once we told him everything, he came right with us.”
“Wait a sec! You didn’t have time to have a conversation like that!”
“Since there were surveillance bacteria inserted into Aura’s body, it wasn’t like we could just talk out in the open, you know?”
Once Urahara and Yukio had met face to face, they had been conversing in a way that was different from normal talking.
Yukio’s use of the compression artifacts that would occasionally run through the screen he caused to float in the air and Urahara’s tapping on the floor with the cane in his hand were nothing other than a way for them to communicate with each other.
Since there was a possibility that Tokinada would decipher something like Morse code, Yukio had used computer language codes and converted Japanese into binary, then displayed those as static noise pulses to Urahara.
Urahara, who had noticed the systematic static, responded to that and replied to Yukio. Then, in order to deceive the surveillance spirit bugs, he showed himself actually fighting Aura, and using the explosion of fire he intentionally allowed himself to be captured by Yukio’s powers. After explaining that, Yukio shrugged and gritted his teeth as though he were slightly irritated as he glared at the castle in the air where Urahara’s voice came from.
“Well, I was obviously a little surprised when he noticed instantly and replied back in my company’s proprietary code. Seriously, what’s that guy’s deal?”
≡
“So you’re getting in my way too, Kisuke Urahara.”
As Tokinada smiled sarcastically, Urahara’s voice replied, “And from my perspective, why’d you think I wouldn’t?”
“I made Hikone in order to fully release the being called the Soul King. Why is it so bad to sacrifice something that was created for that sole purpose?”
“It makes no difference. Whether it’s the revered Reio or Mx. Hikone, it will never be decent to sacrifice a soul with a will in order to maintain the world. I don’t think it’s perfect or ideal even using Yhwach’s remains.”
As though he had flipped a switch, Urahara’s voice reverberated only in the room Tokinada was in.
Tokinada snickered as he spread the smell of blood and continued, “You hypocrite. Didn’t you have the same goal that I had? Didn’t you create those dolls you cultivate in your shabby hideout for that purpose? When the time comes, won’t you use the Hogyoku and cram all kinds of konpaku into them to use them in place of the Soul—”
Urahara’s voice reverberated again, interrupting his provocation.
“If that’s what it looked like to you through the surveillance spirit bugs, then let me tell you this…”
Though the voice still sounded cheerful, it was charged with a pressure that could chill the spine.
“You have holes for eyes and terrible communication skills.”
“So then you plan on continuing to turn your back to your own desires until the very end?”
“I don’t intend to feign I’m a virtuous person. More importantly, how about you finally surrender? Regardless of whether your final trump card Mx. Ubuginu wins or loses against Mr. Zaraki, I don’t think they will be able to take on everyone else, and this castle in the sky is now just a floating piece of junk.”
Though Urahara matter-of-factly informed Tokinada that he had overridden all the systems, Tokinada did not let his grin disappear as he turned his eyes up to stare at the ceiling.
“I see. So it’s just junk floating in the air then.”
In the next moment…
He thrust a different-colored Tenkaiketchu that he had produced from his clothes into the floor, and at the same time, he used a special kido to hit the floor of the gauge room.
“That’s more than enough to have some fun, Kisuke Urahara.”
≡
A dull groan rang out, and the area below the castle in the sky became engulfed in explosive flames.
“Hey, what’s going on now?!” Candice’s eyes widened.
Then the castle’s external bullhorns came online once again.
“Uhh, test test. Everyone down below—can you hear me?”
When they heard Urahara’s voice once again from the castle in the air, Yoriuchi asked, “That Kisuke…was he up to something?”
There wasn’t any way he could have heard her voice, but Urahara’s next words reverberated through the place with perfect timing. “It wasn’t me. Mr. Tsunayashiro has gotten a bit desperate.”
“That’s not good. Huh? Is that thing coming down?”
Just as Kyoraku murmured that, they could see that the building in the sky, which was larger than a skyscraper, was slowly starting to fall.
“Well, looks like he’s really gone big, but we should be able to escape using shunpo.”
“Doesn’t seem like it’ll be as simple as that.”
Ginjo, who had undone his bankai and returned to his normal state, narrowed his eyes as he observed the surrounding reishi. There was pronounced reishi filling the entire Kyogoku. It eddied fiercely with the castle in the air at its center, and the surrounding air slowly began to transform.
“You don’t mean…he activated the Tenkaiketchu?!”
Then Tokinada’s voice, rather than Urahara’s, echoed through the external bullhorns.
“You won this time. Unfortunately, it looks like I couldn’t kill you.”
“Tokinada!”
Realizing what their opponent was up to, Kyoraku scowled.
“What? I’m just letting some junk fall from the sky. It’s not as though the world is ending.”
It wasn’t clear if he was trying to keep them there, or if this was retaliation for squashing his plans, or if he wasn’t thinking at all and simply wanted to see what would happen…
Though they couldn’t suss out his motivation, what he was trying to do was obvious.
Tokinada Tsunayashiro had destroyed the system keeping the building afloat and was attempting to transport the structure to Karakura Town.
“Hey, wait. If such a ridiculously large thing falls from that height…”
“Karakura Town will likely be wiped off the map.” Liltotto spoke in a chilled tone, finishing the sentence that Yukio had started. “We don’t give a crap what happens to Karakura Town. But it’s a Jureichi, isn’t it? I doubt that the world will be unscathed if it’s smashed to bits.”
“Well then…what will we do about it?”
Kyoraku refined his own spiritual pressure as he looked into the sky.
I think Captain Zaraki’s Nozarashi could cut through it, but he’s still in the middle of his battle. Anyway, it’s not as though it would stop the teleportation if it were destroyed. As for the Arrancars and Quincies, they don’t have a reason to protect Karakura Town…
Kyoraku fumbled for a solution that involved only the Soul Reapers, but before he could come up with anything, the situation deteriorated yet again.
“Wait! The part that got blown away before is coming down!”
They had all realized it when Muguruma shouted. A part of the bottom of the castle in the air that had separated from the floating system was falling directly to the ground of the Kyogoku even before the teleportation went into effect.
Most of those in the area were terribly wounded. Those who had some degree of stamina despite that started to move in order to evade it, but…
One figure was a step ahead of them.
At first glance, it looked like someone simply hoisting their right arm to the sky. However, the spiritual pressure perceptions of those nearby clearly indicated an abnormality in the figure. Centering on that humanoid shadow, a whirl of reishi writhed and, just as it seemed to stretch into the air, entangled itself in the fragment of the castle as it fell down. The speed of its fall steadily slowed until it halted in midair as though time had stopped.
The Fullbringers and Shuhei Hisagi understood what had happened. He looked at that shadow—at the ashen Aura Michibane—and forgot the pain of his own wounds as he shouted, “Don’t be reckless! If you do that, you’ll die!”