Chapter 68: Bankai and Bankai
Even within the Four Great Noble Clans, whose members were born with transcendent spiritual power, a Shinigami who could achieve Bankai might appear only once every several generations.
Add to that the fact that Bankai was one of the basic requirements to become a Captain, and its mystique only grew stronger.
In the eyes of the world it had long since become a symbol of glory, a towering milestone.
To master it was to have one's name etched into history.
Now, two new names were being carved into that shining record at the same time.
One could only say that Yamamoto Genryusai was witnessing history once again.
He stared fixedly ahead, as if unwilling to miss a single heartbeat of what was unfolding.
The twin pillars of light slowly faded, and the atmosphere rushed back in to fill the void.
A torrent of spiritual power, tangled with dust and roaring wind, swept over the land.
Then, with a thunderous roar of spiritual pressure, it blasted apart everything that still blocked the view.
Two divine silhouettes emerged, revealed in their entirety.
Ichigo looked slimmer than before.
It was only an illusion.
He now wore a white high collared inner shirt beneath a Shinigami coat that resembled a long black trench. Blue and white trim ran along the edges, and the garment wrapped around his right arm and shoulder, tracing elegant patterns over the fabric.
The long hem split and flowed behind him in several tails, fluttering like ribbons.
There was a classical beauty to it, reminiscent of European court attire.
Standing there, his lean frame drew the eye like a drawn blade.
In his right hand he held something that technically resembled a bow, yet it was better described as a black blue flash of light shaped into the arc of a bowstring.
On the other side, Shimiya Takeru shattered even more of the conventional image.
He was clad entirely in black, encased from head to toe in dark silver armor.
In the center of his chest, a brilliant blue light burned, similar to the one on the Mushroom Woman, like a gemstone or crystal embedded into the plating.
A pitch black cape billowed behind him, heavy and shadowlike, as if it were a solid piece of darkness nailed to his shoulders.
His hands were empty, yet the armor that fit close to his body carried the hard sheen of forged steel, and every line of its design suggested blades and sharp edges.
His head was sealed inside a helmet of black and silver. No face was visible. Only two narrow blue lights shone from within, nothing like the eyes of a living being, carrying no trace of human emotion.
Cold and fully armored, he looked complete even without a weapon in hand.
There was no sense of anything missing, because he himself was the weapon.
He was the purest manifestation of the philosophy of conflict, taken to its extreme.
"Tensa Zangetsu."
"Vidyaraja Endonemī."
With the release of those names, their true Bankai were announced to the world.
At this moment both of them had stepped into the realm that most Shinigami could only dream of reaching.
Their combat power was approaching the absolute summit.
Even the people who knew them best would have struggled to recognize them now.
The oppressive pressure that poured off their Bankai forms was simply too overwhelming.
They looked like inhuman monsters.
Anomalies among anomalies.
Even ignoring everything else, their Bankai stood out for their very shape.
In Yamamoto Genryusai's memory, he could not recall any Bankai that resembled these two.
One Zanpakuto had turned entirely into reishi.
The other did not even manifest a blade.
Most Bankai became gigantic or exaggerated, granting control over some massive construct or power.
These two were the opposite.
Too small.
Too refined.
"If this old man had no discernment at all, he would surely think that"
His gaze grew more solemn.
If all this grand display of power amounted to nothing more than a change of clothing, if this was only a showy outer shell with no substance, then how was he supposed to explain the terrifying surge in their spiritual pressure?
How was he supposed to explain the suffocating oppression settling over the battlefield?
Or the quiet, persistent sense of danger pricking at his heart?
In the next instant, Ichigo vanished from where he stood.
Yamamoto's eyes opened a little wider.
So fast.
Many times faster than before, and with a familiar lightness and sharpness to the movement.
Even more astonishing was the way Ichigo, now wielding a bow of light, charged in.
There was nothing graceful about his approach.
It was a brutal frontal assault at extreme speed, and he even leapt in for a full bodied slash.
If it had been an ordinary bow it would have been absurd.
But strictly speaking, what he held was only a beam of light in the shape of a bow.
That made it ideal for this kind of attack.
After all, Getsuga Tensho was also a kind of light.
At this moment he was less a man using a bow to smash someone than a fighter wielding a curved Getsuga as a blade.
Yamamoto started to swing his sword up to meet the blow.
His arm stopped halfway.
Something like a steel cable had burst out of the ground and wrapped around his wrist, locking it in place before he could complete the motion.
There was only one person who could have done it.
Takeru.
He did not even have a proper weapon in his hand. By all rights he should have been the one to rush straight in, yet he had chosen to stay where he was.
He clenched his armored fists and gave a sharp yank.
The Kido threads shot from his fingers were far more flexible than any sword. Their firing speed rivaled a drawn strike, and their maneuverability was vastly superior.
They could drill into the ground, then burst up at Yamamoto's feet, binding his arms and legs and strangling his offense before it could fully take shape.
With the Captain Commander's limbs bound, Hollow White seemed to think of something that delighted him. He swung down his weapon before he had even closed the distance.
A black blue Getsuga fell from the sky.
"Hmph. Petty tricks."
Yamamoto was even more extreme than Hollow White.
With his arms and legs restrained, he leaned his entire body backward and drove his forehead up into the oncoming attack.
The black blue Getsuga crashed against his skull and stopped. He did not take a single step back, as if he had just headbutted a speeding train.
However, while he was struggling against that slash, Hollow White had already used the opening to circle around behind him.
"Then how about this one?"
This time he really was cutting with a bow.
The black blue light in his hand curved and swelled, releasing a terrifying surge of power.
It collided in a pincer with the first Getsuga still pressing down from the front.
If Yamamoto's speed had been any lower, he might actually have been able to evade more easily.
As it was, his extraordinary mobility worked against him.
He had no choice but to harden his spiritual pressure and take the impact head on.
The collision resembled a plasma burst of extreme density.
In the next instant, an even more violent glare of burning blue white fire swallowed it whole.
"Such stubborn bones."
Hollow White retreated from the heart of the blast and clicked his tongue.
A figure wrapped in flame burst out of the explosion.
The scarred Captain Commander came hurtling forward, sword blazing, a meteor thrown straight at Hollow White.
The latter raised his hand as if to fire.
Yamamoto's charge stopped dead.
He immediately veered away, cutting to the side.
To an onlooker, it would have looked like the reflex of a bird startled from a branch.
In reality, it was exactly the right move.
Because a tenth of a second later, a blinding white pillar of light speared out from the fading explosion, punching through the wall of fire and dust like a high energy laser.
Had he remained where he was, it would have run him straight through the back.
There was no time to consider what that pillar was.
Before Yamamoto had even properly regained his footing, Hollow White was already on top of him again, taking advantage of the moment.
The flash of the blade was brief and vicious.
This time it carved a real wound across the old man's chest.
Since the beginning of the battle, this was the first time they had landed a tangible result.
The minor cuts and bruises from spiritual pressure impacts, the torn garments and dust on his shoulders, did not count. Those were merely superficial signs of chaos.
The blood that scattered from this cut made Hollow White grin in savage satisfaction.
The grin vanished almost at once.
Before the blood could hit the ground it ignited in midair, turning to flame and evaporating.
Yamamoto slammed his back foot into the ground, cracking the ruined street and forcing his body to steady itself against the force of the slash that had almost knocked him flying.
He let out a low growl of anger and swung Ryujin Jakka in a horizontal cut at Hollow White.
"Good timing."
Hollow White refused to back down.
The bow of light in his hands swelled and transformed into a massive Getsuga shaped like a great scimitar.
It crashed against the flaming sword.
Explosions filled the sky.
Fire rolled outward in a devouring tide and the entire battlefield seemed to catch fire.
The ground within several hundred meters buckled and collapsed, as fragile as old tofu.
Heaven and earth lost all color.
Only crimson and black blue remained, each devouring half the world as they slammed against each other.
In that chaos, an armored figure appeared behind the old man.
"Truly worthy of a Seireitei honor student. Your philosophy of cutting down enemies who must be defeated from behind is executed flawlessly. Unfortunately for you, this old man has been waiting for that."
Yamamoto had already anticipated the move.
While his flaming sword locked with Hollow White's, he pointed his left hand behind him.
"Hado number eighty eight, Hiryu Gekizoku Shinten Raiho."
Fire in one hand, lightning in the other.
He clearly intended to crush both of them at once.
The torrent of lightning roared toward Takeru.
The armored youth did not even blink.
He walked straight into it.
The pillar of light could not slow his steps at all.
Calling it air would have been an insult to the resistance of air.
At this moment, in his Bankai state, he was more like a mass hurtling through the vacuum of space.
He reached Yamamoto in the blink of an eye.
At the same time, Hollow White suddenly withdrew his weapon and fell back.
The Captain Commander had committed fully to his attack.
The sudden absence of resistance sent his body swaying forward with the momentum.
The blue glow in Takeru's eyes burned hotter.
His dark silver armor reflected the surrounding flames in a reddish sheen. The cape behind him whipped and snapped in the heat, as if struggling to keep up with its master's speed.
"Only Flash."
Takeru drove his armored fist forward.
Yamamoto finally understood the origin of the earlier pillar of light.
It had come from this right hand, from this slightly unnatural gauntleted fist as it clenched and struck.
The atmosphere was the sheath, and the fist was the blade.
To throw a punch was to draw his sword.
It was not a pure sword style, but a unique fusion born from Kido.
Normally it was unwise to casually change the established medium for such a technique.
But in Bankai, after donning this dark silver battle suit and becoming a humanoid weapon, his entire body was wrapped in immense spiritual pressure.
He himself had become the best possible catalyst.
Under these conditions, using the atmosphere as a sheath to fire a pillar of light that pierced through a sea of fire was no longer strange.
Even using the atmosphere as a sheath to transform his entire being into a blade and strike the enemy was no longer impossible.
The fist he thrust at Yamamoto now was the tip of that blade.
The impact was instantaneous.
There was no chance to react.
The old man, caught in the moment of imbalance, took the full force of the strike to his face.
Spiritual pressure condensed to an extreme erupted all at once.
Blinding light engulfed them both, impossible to tell whether it was blade light or pure spiritual glow.
Yamamoto was launched clear of the beam in an instant.
He blew out of the battlefield like a shell, soared over an entire ruined street, smashed through several half collapsed buildings and finally ground to a halt.
He snorted, a rough, pained sound.
Blood ran from his nose and from the corners of his eyes and mouth. His left eye refused to open at all.
His chest rose and fell unevenly, his breathing ragged.
Before he could steady himself, he sensed a presence above.
Ichigo was already there.
Facing the man who stood at the absolute summit of the Shinigami, he did not hesitate for even a heartbeat.
The instant Hollow White pulled back, he did what he always did.
He fired.
Massive cross shaped arrows, each dozens of meters long, poured down one after another.
A saturation bombardment rained onto Yamamoto Genryusai's position.
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