Higashino Shuuichi stepped once more into his inner world. In the small house woven from his Zanpakutō's soul, he met the man across from him—the blade's true form.
"How many times have I come here now?"
"The tenth."
"Have I really forgotten that many times…?"
He dropped into a seat across from the man—first time he'd ever sat in here. He was tired.
In "real" time not even two days had passed since Ichibē Hyōsube agreed to add him to Zero Division's crash program and Ōetsu Nimaiya began drilling him on unlocking and keeping Bankai control. Yet it felt like a century. He was certain he'd done a great many things, and yet his mind was blank—except for one stubborn sense: this wasn't his first visit during training. He'd come many times. He'd said things. Done things. All of it gone.
He couldn't remember—but his Zanpakutō could.
"Why do I keep forgetting the earlier rounds?"
"Because it's required."
"Required…?"
At what point had "forgetting" become part of his Bankai?
"It is a step you must pass."
The man rose, took three bamboo scrolls from a shelf, and set them before him.
Shuuichi opened the leftmost scroll first. In small seal script it recorded The Knife Hidden Behind a Smile—兵法·笑里藏刀. His first Bankai stratagem. That one he remembered well.
He glanced up. The man offered nothing.
He opened the middle scroll. Blank.
He opened the last. Also blank.
Understanding slid into place.
"Learning isn't learned if you can't use it—it's just 'paper war.' Forgetting isn't erasure—it settles into the body as memory. And in the end… you fuse the parts until they're instinct. Right?"
The man smiled. "You have already forgotten: Steal the Goat in Passing, Cast a Brick to Lure Jade, Swap the Pillars, Steal the Beams, Cross the Sea Under Concealment, Guest Becomes Host, Feign Madness Without Losing Balance, Lure the Tiger from the Mountains, Startle the Snake by Beating the Grass, and Pull the Ladder After the Roof Is Scaled. Aside from the four you currently command, four more remain. When all are forgotten, you will know my true name."
"So until I reach your true name, I can hold at most four Bankai stratagems at once, right?"
Otherwise, past-him would never have agreed to let go of tools in a crisis.
The Zanpakutō nodded, then gestured for the usual finale.
They fought. And, as usual, Shuuichi lost.
He was preparing to report back to Nimaiya for the next "unlearn-to-master" cycle when the Royal Palace shuddered.
Outside the hall, he saw "Yhwach"—Akimi—already upon them.
"Looks like your training's getting cut short," Ōetsu said at his side, watching the intruder rise.
For most people in this fabricated future, this would be a brutal fight. Even though Akimi had inexplicably performed Auswählen on Haschwalth and provoked defections among the Sternritter, Akimi himself—now wearing Yhwach—was a walking checkmate. After "cleaning" Soul Society and then murdering Ishida Uryū and Ishida Ryūken in the World of the Living, he had, script in hand, Auswählen'd the remaining Quincy, sacrificing the dead weight and pushing his own power to the summit.
In Akimi's design it should have been a straight-line stomp—until Higashino's "detour" paid off.
Before leaving Seireitei to draft Kurosaki Ichigo into the mess, Shuuichi had stopped by Muken beneath Central 46.
There he'd met a familiar man: Aizen Sōsuke.
Years had dulled Shuuichi's memory of how Kyōraku once persuaded Aizen to help—but persuading him now took one line:
"You don't want a third-rate clown like this destroying the world, do you?"
Aizen's laughter filled the deep.
It had been a long time since a Shinigami spoke his language. If not for prison—and if they'd met earlier—perhaps the two might've gotten along. Even now, it wasn't too late. Whether to kill the tedium of confinement or as a gift for a new, amusing friend, Aizen agreed.
So when Akimi marched his Sternritter from the World of the Living back into Seireitei, everyone—completely unsuspecting—walked into Kyōka Suigetsu.
Akimi thought he'd erased all threats and unleashed Auswählen without restraint. In reality, Seireitei wound up carpeted with Sternritter corpses while the Shinigami survived intact—Uryū's family in the Living World as well.
And it still wasn't over.
Having never tasted Kyōka Suigetsu in person, Akimi couldn't conceive it. Inside the Palace, the "Higashino Shuuichi" he fought—earth-shaking, world-splitting—was Ichibē Hyōsube all along.
How could Higashino have grown so monstrous in under two days? He hadn't. Akimi just never saw the board.
Then the scene replayed from the true script: a blade through the chest, and Kurosaki Ichigo standing before him.
Only then did Akimi grasp the scope of the mistake.
"No… no, it shouldn't be like this. I killed every threat—so why—why are they still alive?!"
His power poured out like sand. Another figure moved into view.
"Who now? Hyōsube? Shutara? Aizen—?"
He couldn't trust his eyes, and the drain kept him from calling on the Almighty.
"None of them," Shuuichi whispered at his ear. "It's me."
The blade drove through Akimi's heart.
"Coward… you won't even face me head-on."
Shuuichi looked down at the blood sliding along his edge. "I'm not stupid. I can't beat Yhwach now. When the board has players who can, why should I swing? If you need to blame someone, blame the choice you made—hitching yourself to a man fated to die. If it were me, I'd have chosen Aizen Sōsuke."
"…If I… had another chance… I'd choose… Aizen Sō—"
His voice thinned. In this fabricated future, those dragged inside died for real.
In the haze of his final moments, voices flickered:
"I heard if you drink Yhwach's blood you become a Quincy—gain a Schrift."
"That's for humans. A Shinigami might not—"
"But this is a fabricated world. Anything's possible, isn't it?"
"Blood from the heart… has to be different."
"Anyway, who knows if it helps—can't hurt."
A soft gulp.
None of it mattered to Akimi anymore. He closed his eyes, content at least that he'd covered the retreat.
The instant his breath stopped, Higashino Shuuichi vanished—to the shock of everyone present.
When he blinked awake, he was back in the World of the Living.
Same place as before. Scorched earth to the horizon, a few houses pieced back together. Osaka's old bustle gone—bleak and hollow now.
He didn't go looking for Kisaragi Shūsuke and the others. He found an empty, abandoned shack first.
The aftereffects of Yhwach's heart-blood hit. His body felt aflame, a new, alien power coursing wild inside him.
When he tried to clamp it down with Shinigami reiatsu, the newborn force fought back—stronger than the Hollow taint he'd penned up long ago, and far more defiant. Not satisfied with butting heads against his Shinigami core, it kept poking the Hollow as well; his bone-white mask flickered on and off.
Yeah. He'd overplayed it.
With no Urahara handy, and no way he could shamble to Soul Society in this state to consult Aizen, how was he supposed to master Quincy power?
In the original story, Kurosaki Ichigo practically flowed into it. Why did Shuuichi feel like an explosion waiting to happen?
It didn't last. A glyph surfaced in his mind:
I.
Imagine.
The moment it formed, he knew what it did.
Before he lost control, he activated it.
A new human male appeared—sculpted by Shuuichi's imagination.
Shuuichi set his right hand to the man's chest.
The feral Quincy power poured out of Shuuichi and slid—clean as water—into the man.
And then Shuuichi discovered something genuinely new: true twenty-four-hour, no-blind-spot dual vision.
Thanks to past practice with reishi constructs, running himself and the fabricated human in parallel wasn't that hard. Better yet, because he'd subconsciously patterned the "imaginary" body after his reishi dolls, the man had basic autonomy—he could carry out simple orders on his own.
"So… a real, independent avatar. And it comes bundled with a Schrift."
For a planner, one extra, disconnected body meant a lot more room to move. If needed, he could cancel the imagination and recall the Quincy power. Just… not yet. The Quincy side was still weak, and his grip on it weaker. Pulling it back now would be all downside, no gain.
Once he could truly master it—and train it to at least trail his Shinigami tier—then retrieval would help.
As for getting it trained up… well, he did have Quincy connections in the Living World.
He hadn't forgotten: Nagasawa Satomi's "big sister," Kurosaki Mai.
In good spirits, he clapped the handsome stand-in on the shoulder.
"From now on, you're Kabuno Takuya."
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