In this fabricated future… how do you kill me?
That was the question Higashino Shuuichi asked himself most after taking over as captain of the 11th Division inside this made-up timeline.
Because this was power outside anything he knew; there was no past experience to lean on.
Fortunately, the arrogant persona he'd set up from the start gave him cover—aloof for a while, wary of anyone who tried to get close.
And Akimi didn't seem intent on making him wait long.
Three days after Shuuichi put on the 11th's haori, a group of uninvited guests slipped into Seireitei like phantoms—triggering no alarms—and headed for one target only: Higashino Shuuichi.
Sitting in the captain's lounge of the 11th Division barracks, Shuuichi eyed the three "guests" who had appeared in front of him—each wearing the same white, hooded cloak over their backs—and felt a flicker of surprise.
"Your first target… is me?"
He wasn't surprised that Quincies had shown up. He was surprised they picked him first.
Logically, even with Yamamoto Genryūsai dead by some accident, they should go straight for the current Captain-Commander, Kyōraku Shunsui.
Instead, they came for the man whose official record said he had just returned from Hell.
Shuuichi could only think of one explanation: whoever designed this Quincy incursion inside the fabricated future knew exactly who he was.
And in this fiction, who else would know his identity?
Don't tell me you wrapped yourself in Haschwalth's skin, Akimi…
He rubbed at a headache.
That was the "good" outcome. If Akimi had wrapped himself in Yhwach, that would be the real problem.
"It sounds like you're quite familiar with who we are."
Among the three, a tall man with center-parted black hair, no eyebrows, and a black mask studded with cone-like spikes covering his face below the eyes, turned toward Shuuichi and spoke with hauteur.
"More or less. For instance, I know you come from Seireitei's shadows. I know you're Quincy—Sternritter of the Wandenreich."
As he rose from his seat, all three masked faces across from him twitched in genuine shock at how much he knew.
"And I know your name is Äs Nödt—designation F. The pretty-eyed guy on your left with the short black hair is Cang Du—designation I. And the big walking iron lump on your right—if I'm not mistaken you're called BG9?
Your designation should be K, right?"
"Who are you?! How do you know so much about us!"
Seconds earlier, Äs Nödt had the lofty pride of a predator facing an ant. Now his heart was choked with fear—the fear of being seen through.
"Who I am isn't important. What matters is—since you've come to 'visit' Seireitei, don't plan on leaving. As the new captain of the Eleventh, I'm a very… 'hospitable' host."
He vanished and reappeared at Äs Nödt's throat, reiatsu bursting. One Fuzan cleave, and the man's brief appearance ended then and there.
At the same moment, nearly every Shinigami in Seireitei felt the unmasked swell of Shuuichi's reiatsu.
"Captain-Commander—what is Captain Higashino doing?"
In the 1st Division barracks, Ise Nanao pushed her glasses up and glanced toward the 11th with worry as she stood beside Kyōraku Shunsui.
From the beginning, she had opposed appointing some unknown Shinigami to the Eleventh in such a fragile, postwar climate.
"Let's go see."
Shunsui was puzzled too.
He trusted his read on Higashino Shuuichi: a Shinigami who still had some sense of belonging to Soul Society—otherwise he wouldn't have held back so carefully when he scuffled with Ikkaku and the others.
But what was this?
Letting his full reiatsu roar inside Seireitei—this wasn't just rule-breaking.
Others had the same thought and moved even faster—like Yoruichi Shihōin, who, after the Karakura war, returned to Soul Society and took the 2nd Division captaincy back from Suì-Fēng.
"That's…"
When Yoruichi reached the scene, she froze too.
The two men fighting Higashino Kenpachi were using Quincy powers.
No—wrong question. The question was: how had Quincy entered Seireitei without any alarm? Why hadn't the captains been warned?
"Hiry— Flying Sickle Kick!"
"Gatling!"
Cang Du and BG9 had no time for Jugram's orders to finish swiftly.
They'd realized this Shinigami captain was not only absurdly strong—he seemed to know them too well.
From start to finish he hadn't released a Zanpakutō. He was using pure zanjutsu and kidō.
Their prepped medallions for stealing Bankai? Completely useless.
They were forced to awaken Vollständig just to keep up.
Even then, the two of them together couldn't put him down…
"Inner Fuzan."
Forced by battles in the World of the Living, Shuuichi had used his control over reishi to develop this second form: compressing reiatsu and reishi to the limit into the blade.
Unlike the original Fuzan's naked destructive power, this version smothered, and kept its edge always just out of reach.
Under that collapse-born slash that cleaved space itself, both Cang Du and BG9 dodged the line at once—only to realize their bodies wouldn't move.
"No… it's not that I can't move—"
Sweat rolled down Cang Du's brow. Even pushing Hirenkyaku-like speed to the limit, he couldn't get farther from the space Shuuichi had just cut.
The cleaved strip acted like a black hole, its lethal pull dragging him in.
The longer they stalled, the more that torn space tried to knit shut. But—
Shuuichi liked kicking people when they were down.
One step took him to Cang Du.
No frills—just lift the blade and bring it straight down.
"Shadow Domain!"
BG9 shoved reishi into both of their shadows.
Normally, Cang Du could slip into BG9's shadow in an instant. But the space Shuuichi severed pulled not only their flesh, but the reishi that made them.
Cang Du was a half beat slow.
"Ah!"
A scream; an arm thumped to the floor.
His right arm fell, severed as simply as that.
"This technique…"
Perched on a rooftop, Yoruichi lifted a hand to hold back other Shinigami from charging in as she watched Shuuichi "execute" Cang Du. Her mind flashed to the late Captain-Commander.
Whatever old grudges and misunderstandings had once been between them had burned away that day he died.
She'd thought many of his ways would be lost with him. She hadn't expected to see this echo.
Either way, it was time she stepped in.
Shuuichi had already turned on BG9. The machine read his movements and always chose the "correct" counter.
Seeing through never meant keeping up.
His body lagged behind his mind.
After a few more minutes he, too, lost a limb—his left leg—shorn off.
And that was the beginning of the end.
"Bakudō #81: Dankū!"
A transparent wall snapped up between Shuuichi and BG9—not to shield Shuuichi, but to shield the Quincy. Yoruichi had cast it to keep the two alive.
"What's the meaning of this, Captain Shihōin?"
With Yoruichi intervening, Shuuichi didn't press the attack.
"These two cannot die yet. We need a live mouth to tell us how they slipped into Seireitei."
She didn't say the other half aloud: what are these Quincy? Even as head of a Great House, she'd never seen these peculiar forms.
Had the remnants in the World of the Living made some… move?
Fresh from Karakura alongside Kurosaki Ichigo and Ishida Uryū, this was bad news for Yoruichi.
If this really tied to the living-world Quincy, even she wouldn't be able to stop the nobles from moving against the survivors.
And Kurosaki Ichigo and Ishida Uryū—the Quincy's son—wouldn't escape entanglement.
"Fair. But, Captain Shihōin, our problem is: how do we catch them now?"
Before their eyes—in the breaths it took Yoruichi and he to speak—two big hands reached up from the shadows and yanked Cang Du and BG9 down.
Shuuichi slid his Zanpakutō away and spread his hands.
He'd expected it.
Äs Nödt had been the only one he'd blindsided. The Wandenreich would be watching Soul Society closely now. They wouldn't let him take any more pieces.
Even without Yoruichi, something in the shadows would have dragged them back.
"What?!"
For Yoruichi, it was a slap in the face.
On the surface it looked like her intervention had caused their escape.
If she weren't a Shihōin and a captain, Central 46 would probably have her on the carpet tomorrow.
"They were pulled into the shadows. If I'm not mistaken, that's how they entered Seireitei in the first place."
Thankfully, more captains had already gathered outside the Eleventh—from Kyōraku Shunsui to others. Watching how the pair vanished, Shunsui said what needed saying.
Shuuichi gave a small nod. "I agree, Captain-Commander. I was in the captain's lounge dealing with paperwork when three Quincy appeared in my room. No warning at all.
If they came from shadow, that tracks.
And during the fight both used shadow with a very high level of finesse.
One coincidence is a coincidence. Two means a trained system."
"So, Higashino Kenpachi, what you're suggesting is—they're hiding in our shadows?"
For once Shunsui's grin was gone. He stared straight at Shuuichi.
He trusted this mysterious Shinigami whose name had followed the Dōma clan for centuries—at least to a point.
Even as Captain-Commander, not everything was his to read. The Great Spirit Book Gallery wasn't a place he could peruse at will.
But a Dōma retainer—especially one embedded for ages with the "Hell-side"—would have access to certain sealed things, never mind that the last of the clan in Soul Society had died and "sent back" a retainer to keep their influence (as per Shuuichi's careful fiction).
"I don't know. But I believe in this: when danger is potential, assume it's there. Since this possibility exists, we should act on it. We don't lack all leverage, do we?"
He tilted his chin at the corpse on the floor—Äs Nödt, the one he'd ended in a single stroke.
"Heh… right. I was overthinking."
At the nudge, Shunsui chuckled at himself. Since he'd become Captain-Commander, he'd grown cautious—Soul Society couldn't take another convulsion. But sometimes, better to move first.
Watching Shuuichi and Shunsui move in lockstep to set the response, Yoruichi felt strangely like a bystander.
And so, a prologue to the Wandenreich's invasion—something that should have been a huge shock in Soul Society—barely raised ripples among the rank and file, simply because they chose the wrong target. Only the captains caught the scent of a storm massing on the horizon.
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