When Higashino Shuuichi next awoke, it was already the evening of the following day.
Zaraki Kenpachi and Kusajishi Yachiru had long since left the 4th Division barracks.
Many 4th Division members had wanted to summon the 9th Division to arrest and imprison the two, but in the end, Unohana Retsu herself had stepped forward and allowed them to go.
Still, before leaving, Kusajishi Yachiru had left Higashino Shuuichi a small note:
"Shuu,
Thank you for letting Ken-chan enjoy such an exhilarating fight. He was so happy afterward that he wanted to wait here until you woke up to fight again.
But I thought, since this is Seireitei—the place for shinigami—it wouldn't be good for you two to fight here, so I had Ken-chan take me back to Rukongai.
But don't worry, Shuu. I believe we'll meet again very soon!
When that time comes, you and Ken-chan can really fight it out again\~
—Yachiru Kusajishi"
Higashino Shuuichi couldn't figure out how someone born from Zaraki's soul, who should have come from Rukongai, could read and write so neatly in such a cute hand.
Still, the incident had passed without disaster.
In truth, his final choice yesterday had been something of a gamble.
He remembered from the original story: once Zaraki acknowledged an opponent's strength, he would never kill them, preferring to prolong the fight. So in the end, Higashino Shuuichi had practically dropped his guard just to win Zaraki's recognition as a worthy foe. That way, his safety was more secure.
And since Yachiru Kusajishi, as part of Zaraki's soul, longed for him to find such an opponent, even if something had gone wrong, she would have done everything to save him.
On top of that, he had already stalled long enough that Unohana Retsu should have been nearly at the battlefield.
All those factors combined had led to his seemingly reckless act.
But the sudden battle only deepened his desire to quickly grow stronger, to shatter the shackles holding back his reiatsu.
Should he wait for Aizen to reveal the path of shinigami hollowfication, using Hollow power to break through the bottleneck?
That once seemed plausible—but Aizen's sudden fixation on peering into the Royal Palace had shelved the plan indefinitely.
Higashino Shuuichi felt he could no longer wait.
With the story of Soul Society spinning further out of control, and with Aizen's ambitions—already greater than the original because of his own interference—who knew how much chaos was coming?
Rather than hoping for a distant promise, it was better to seize the seed of power with his own hands.
But aside from hollowfication, what else in this world could break a shinigami's natural limits and push past the boundaries of reiatsu?
He thought a while, then silently turned his gaze toward the 13th Division barracks.
Fullbring. Quincy.
Two nearly forgotten words surfaced in his mind.
The Fullbring system and the Quincy system—one operated completely outside the rules of reiatsu, the other shattered them outright.
For shinigami and Hollows, reiatsu was everything. Strong reiatsu meant strength.
As Aizen once declared: if your reiatsu overwhelms, even a pig can soar.
But before those two systems, such a maxim looked like a clown's joke.
The Quincy could be explained—their refined reishi control made them qualitatively superior to shinigami and Hollows.
But Fullbring? That was outright cheating, leeching power from fragments of the Soul King's body.
In his past life, reading the Quincy and Fullbring arcs, Higashino Shuuichi had mocked those points countless times. But now, actually living in this world, he realized something.
He had no cheat. But this world itself was full of cheats.
Especially Fullbring. Even Ichigo Kurosaki, already stacked with powers, could awaken it.
Not just him—Jūshirō Ukitake, the 13th Division Captain, and Pernida Parnkgjas, one of Yhwach's Schutzstaffel, both rose through fragments of the Soul King.
And speaking of Soul King fragments, Higashino Shuuichi remembered a very specific one in Soul Society.
"Matsumoto Rangiku—the Soul King's nail fragment."
So far, he hadn't heard of Aizen acquiring it. That meant the incident where Aizen attacked Rangiku hadn't happened yet.
Higashino Shuuichi had no qualms about taking it from her.
First, with her mediocre talent—likely weaker than his own—the fragment could be a heavy burden on her body. Otherwise, why would she have grown up weak and reliant on Gin Ichimaru's protection?
Ukitake's lifelong frailty was another clear example of what such fragments did.
Second, it didn't matter who claimed the fragment. Better in his hands than wasted in Aizen's.
In the original story, Aizen only took it before making the Hōgyoku. In this timeline, he already had half of it.
That explained why he hadn't yet turned toward Rangiku—because he didn't need to.
Nowadays, after completing the Hōgyoku, he no longer cared much about harvesting souls from Rukongai. Only occasionally would Tōsen or Higashino Shuuichi do so to "show loyalty."
But that left a practical problem for Higashino Shuuichi: how to extract a Soul King fragment from a shinigami's body, and how to implant and use it himself?
How to guide its power, and how to awaken Fullbring?
This was research-level work—and in the entire world of Bleach, only a handful might answer. From his position, there was really only one accessible choice.
The current Espada No. 0—Szayelaporro.
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