The air didn't so much as crackle as it did scream.
Four figures, clad in form-fitting black shihakushō without insignia, materialized from the dying light. They didn't emerge from behind cover; they seemed to coalesce from the very shadows themselves, their Reiatsu—cold, sharp, and utterly devoid of individuality—flaring in perfect, murderous unison.
One shot toward Akio like a bolt from a crossbow, a silent, grey blur aiming to decapitate him before he could even draw his Zanpakutō. The other three split their focus with lethal efficiency: one lunged for the Hiro, while the last two, moving with an unnatural, gliding speed, targeted the heir.
Hiro, the head guard, roared, "Protect the young master!" His Zanpakutō was halfway from its sheath.
Akio didn't draw his sword. He didn't need to.
The assassin coming for him was fast, his blade a silver streak aimed at Akio's neck. To the assassin's eyes, his target was a statue, frozen in surprise.
Akio's perception, honed by Sasakibe, saw the attack not as a single motion, but as a series of them: the micro-shift in the hip for power, the tension in the shoulder, the precise angle of the wrist. He saw the attack before the assassin's muscles had even fully committed.
He moved.
It wasn't a Flash Step. It was simpler, more economical. A precise tilt of his head, a fraction of an inch. The razor-sharp Zanpakutō whispered past his ear, severing a few strands of his black hair. The assassin's eyes, visible just above his masked face, widened in shock at the impossible evasion.
Akio's left hand shot up, not as a fist, but as a blade. Toryū: Dragon's Fang.
He didn't aim for the body. He targeted the complex network of nerves and tendons at the assassin's sword-wrist. The heel of his palm struck with the force of a precise hammer blow.
CRACK.
A sickening, dry snap echoed. The assassin grunted, his fingers spasming open. His Zanpakutō clattered to the bridge's pavement. Akio didn't pause. His right hand followed through, fingers curling into a fist that drove into the assassin's diaphragm—not to bruise, but to paralyze. Toryū again, targeting the solar plexus nerve cluster.
The assassin gasped in pain, clutching his stomach as his body refused to move how he wanted to.
"Your speed is meaningless," Akio stated, his voice a cold, dispassionate analysis. "If your movements are telegraphed. You put everything into the strike. There was no contingency. No control. Just wasted energy."
The assassin before Akio, gasping for air, stumbled back. His good hand fumbled for his fallen blade. "You... talk too much," he rasped.
"Well someone told me that words can be a weapon too. Just trying them on you." Akio said remembering some memories.
Flashback...
"You have learned to govern your body. You are beginning to govern your spirit. There is another weapon you leave undisciplined. One you use carelessly. That is, your words," Sasakibe stated.
Akio's brow furrowed slightly. "My words? But in a fight, aren't they just waste of breath. Energy, that should be conserved."
"A narrow view," Sasakibe countered. He picked up his own practice sword. "Assume your stance. Attack me."
Akio did not hesitate. He launched forward, his strike a blur of perfected motion, aimed with surgical precision at Sasakibe's shoulder.
Sasakibe deflected it with a minimal, almost lazy-looking parry. As their blades met, he spoke, his voice still that same, calm, infuriatingly measured tone.
"Your left foot is angled three degrees too far outward. It creates a minute instability in your core. You are compensating by tightening your right trapezius muscle. It is a waste of energy."
The words were so clinically accurate, so pinpointed to the flaws Akio had been tirelessly working to eradicate, that they struck deeper than any physical blow. For a fraction of a second, his focus shattered. His mind, which was supposed to be empty and reactive, was suddenly filled with self-analysis. 'Is my foot wrong? Is my shoulder tight?'
In that fraction of a second, Sasakibe's bokken flicked out. It didn't strike hard, but it tapped him precisely on the bicep of his sword arm—a killing stroke if it were a live blade.
Akio stumbled back, more shocked by the method than the strike.
"You see?" Sasakibe said, lowering his weapon. "A battle is fought here," he tapped his temple, "and here." He tapped his chest over his heart. "Long before it is decided with steel."
"A few words…" Akio began, understanding dawning.
"...can shatter an opponent's focus. Can plant the seed of doubt. Can turn their own mind against them," Sasakibe finished. "An enraged opponent is a predictable opponent. A doubtful opponent is a slow one. You can use your silence as a threat. Or you can use your words as a scalpel."
Back to present....
"Well he also said, observation is the heart of combat," Akio replied, not advancing, but shifting his stance minutely to keep all three remaining opponents in his peripheral vision. The Shadow Network fed him data: the exact positions of the two approaching assassins, the terrified tremors of the Hino heir cowering far behind from this fight, the faint shift in the wind.
The disarmed assassin's Reiatsu flared, a sudden, violent vortex of energy. "Howl, Raijūken!" he snarled.
His Zanpakutō dissolved into a crackling bolt of white lightning that wrapped around his right arm. It wasn't a blade anymore; it was a whip of pure, sizzling energy, moving at the speed of light itself. He lashed out. The lightning whip wasn't aimed at Akio's body; it aimed to encircle him, to bind and electrocute him in one motion.
True speed.
Akio didn't try to outrun lightning. Sasakibe's lessons had beaten that impossibility out of him. You don't outrun the storm; you find its eye.
His analytical prediction kicked in. The whip wasn't a single entity; it was an extension of the assassin's will. He saw the minute twitch in the man's elbow, the specific rotation of his shoulder that dictated the whip's path.
He moved into the attack.
As the lightning whip coiled toward him, Akio took a single, precise step forward and to the left. The crackling energy passed so close he felt the static make his hair stand on end. But it missed.
The assassin's eyes bulged. He flicked his wrist, and the whip reversed direction with terrifying speed, seeking Akio's back.
Akio was already moving. He didn't retreat; he advanced again, closing the distance with two blisteringly fast, yet perfectly controlled steps. The whip lashed the air where he had been a microsecond before, scorching the concrete.
"You see?" Akio said, his voice still that infuriatingly calm lecture. "Speed without precision is just noise. You have a tool that moves at the speed of lightning, but you're still swinging it like a club. You're thinking about power. I'm thinking about placement."
The assassin screamed in fury, unleashing a furious barrage, lashing the whip in a dozen different directions, creating a net of destructive energy.
Akio weaved through it all. He didn't use Flash Steps; he used minimal, exact movements. A slight duck here, a fractional lean there, a pivot on his heel. He was a ghost in the storm, untouched by the chaos. He was using the absolute least amount of energy required, his control so perfect he wasn't even breathing heavily.
He finally drew his own Zanpakutō. The shing of steel was barely audible over the crackle of the lightning whip.
The assassin, enraged and overextended, committed everything to a final, overhead lash meant to split Akio in two.
It was the opening Akio had been waiting for. The telegraphed, all-or-nothing move.
Akio didn't block. He didn't dodge. He stepped inside the arc of the whip, his own blade held low. As the lightning crashed down behind him, he brought his Zanpakutō up in a short, devastatingly efficient arc.
Sōryū: Twin Dragon Surge. Now Akio was going to end it with this
Now, Sōryū wasn't just a flurry of punches. It was a flurry of precise, sword-based strikes.
Just as he was going to crush the windpipe of the assassin and end him for good.
He felt a flicker in his Shadow Network. A distortion of light and pressure from his left flank. Not a threat to him, but perfectly timed. A kunai, humming with concentrated Reiatsu, streaked not at Akio's vitals, but directly at his eyes—a feint designed not to kill, but to disrupt. To force a reaction.
Akio's processed the information he got from the shadow Network. Letting the kunai hit was not an option. Ignoring it was not an option. His head tilted a precise two inches to the right. The kunai grazed past his temple, drawing a thin line of blood.
That micro-second of diversion was all the opening they needed.
From his right flank, a blur of motion. The second assassin didn't attack Akio. He moved with the exact same predatory economy that Akio himself employed. A single, flawless Shunpo that placed him between Akio and his crippled comrade. His Zanpakutō came up in a defensive guard, not to clash with Akio's blade, but to parry it, deflecting the final, severing strike just enough so it whistled harmlessly through the air.
In the same fluid motion, the third assassin—the one who had thrown the kunai—closed the distance. He didn't even look at Akio. He grabbed the first assassin—the one who was fighting Akio—by the collar of his shihakushō.
The three of them then regrouped to fight Akio.