We'll Win

Saito sheathed her sword, preparing to strike again.

Jugram Haschwalth did not look at her.

His sword pointed at Shuichi, and a blue halo appeared at its tip.

The halo rapidly changed shape. Eight energy spikes extended from its edge at once, instantly unfolding like blossoming petals.

They were shorter and thinner than ordinary Holy Arrows, like needles.

[Small Holy Arrow]

Shuichi's sense of danger exploded again.

Eight Holy Arrows fired in succession.

The first left the sword tip and shot toward Shuichi.

It was so fast that Shuichi's eyes could only catch a blue afterimage.

He raised his blade to block. The edge collided with the tip of the Holy Arrow, and red and blue light erupted at once.

The Holy Arrow was knocked off course, flying diagonally away and striking the ruins behind Shuichi, blasting a large hole through a broken wall.

Before Shuichi could steady his breathing, the second shot had arrived.

It gave Shuichi neither time to block nor enough room to evade. He could only twist slightly aside to avoid a fatal hit.

The energy spike entered through his left shoulder and burst out behind his shoulder blade, piercing through muscle and bone and trailing a spray of blood.

Shuichi let out a muffled groan and staggered backward. His left arm instantly lost all strength, leaving the entire weight of his Zanpakutō on his right hand as its tip drooped toward the ground.

The third shot was already on its way.

Shuichi did not wait. He immediately used Shunpo to pull away diagonally backward.

His body left an afterimage in the air. The third Holy Arrow passed through where his chest had been and shot into the street farther away, blasting a crater into the ground.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth shots followed.

The beams rained down on where he had just stood, one after another. Shattered stones flew as the ground exploded, and dust filled the air.

Shuichi landed behind a low wall more than a dozen steps away and leaned against it. Blood poured from his left shoulder, running down his arm to his elbow and dripping onto the ground, forming a small dark-red pool amid the dust.

After firing the last Holy Arrow, Jugram Haschwalth withdrew his sword and turned toward Saito.

When Jugram Haschwalth pointed his sword at Shuichi, Saito instinctively wanted to rush forward and interrupt his attack, forcing him to defend himself. Even making his sword deviate by an inch would have been enough.

But the shield stood before him like a moving wall.

Saito's slashes were all deflected by the shield. The Holy Arrows fired incredibly fast, and by the time Saito adjusted her direction, they had all been released.

Just as Saito's second attack came swinging down.

Jugram Haschwalth's shield slammed into her head-on. Its edge struck Saito's blade with terrifying precision, the force like being rammed by a charging bull.

Saito's arms were knocked apart, her sword tip flung upward, leaving her chest and abdomen completely exposed.

Then came the second blow.

The face of the shield shoved forward, crashing into the space between Saito's chest and abdomen.

Saito felt as though someone had kicked her internal organs from below. Her body stumbled backward uncontrollably, retreating three or four steps as her feet scrambled for balance.

Then—

Jugram Haschwalth's sword came down.

Dairitsu was still raised above Saito's head, and her arms had not yet recovered from the impact of the shield strike.

Her body was leaning backward, her center of gravity slipping away, while his blade traced a powerless arc through the air.

The blade cut into her right shoulder, a Straight Cut slashing downward across her chest and out through the right side of her abdomen.

Saito did not cry out. She merely stood there with her mouth open and eyes wide, staring at Jugram Haschwalth's face. That face rose rapidly in her vision. It was not Jugram Haschwalth who was flying upward—it was Saito who was falling.

She fell backward onto the ground.

Her Zanpakutō slipped from her hand and landed beside her.

The instant Saito fell, Shuichi's blade changed color.

He did not even think about what he should do.

Blood still gushed from the wound piercing his left shoulder. Kneeling behind the low wall on one knee, his right hand gripping his Zanpakutō, he looked through the ruins and dust and saw Jugram Haschwalth's sword cut from Saito's right shoulder to her right abdomen.

Blood-red light burst beneath the grayish-red sky.

The red faded from the blade, replaced by surging blue.

"Dance, Flower of Death!"

Shuichi raised his sword.

Several blue butterflies flew from the blade.

They were not like the hundreds he had seen swarming together in the Inner World last time.

When they detached from the blade, they were like sparks bursting from a fire, swiftly gathering form in the air. The blue scales on their wings glittered beneath the grayish-red daylight.

Jugram Haschwalth turned his head and watched the butterflies fly toward him. They moved quickly.

The first landed on the back of his hand, its wings softly closing and opening, like a blue seal stamped onto his pale skin.

The second landed on his shoulder, the third on the edge of his shield, and the fourth hovered before his eyes.

He did not brush them away, nor did he shatter them with Reiatsu.

He stood there, sword and shield hanging at his sides.

His body froze in that instant. The light in his pupils vanished, replaced by another kind of light.

Images in his mind overlaid his vision.

A forest.

Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, scattering patches of golden light across the ground.

The air smelled of pine resin and earth. Birds called in the distance, while nearby, wind rustled through the bushes.

A boy crouched behind the undergrowth, holding a crude slingshot. Its bands were twisted from bark, and its pouch was sewn from scraps of cloth.

His hair was blond, much shorter than it was now, soft against his forehead. His face still had the roundness of childhood.

His eyes were blue, just as they were now, but what they contained was completely different. There was no indifference, no calmness—only focused, childlike seriousness.

Jugram Haschwalth looked at that boy.

It was himself.

Ahead of the boy, another boy crouched behind a different tree.

His red hair stood up like a flame, messier and wilder than it was now.

He also held a slingshot, but his was far better than Jugram Haschwalth's. The wood had been carved, the bands twisted from real rubber, and the pouch was leather. His face bore a defiant, provocative grin, revealing a missing front tooth.

Bazzard Black.

"Ten!" His voice came from afar, sharp and childish in the way only a child's voice could be.

"I've already hit ten! What about you?"

Jugram Haschwalth lowered his eyes to his hand.

A grass rope hung from it, several rabbits threaded onto the string.

"Seven," Jugram Haschwalth said. His voice was also that of a child, soft and carrying a trace of unwillingness.

Bazz-B poked his head out from behind the tree and laughed. "I won! I told you I'm better than you!"

Jugram Haschwalth looked at him expressionlessly. "Your slingshot is better than mine."

"Then go get another one!"

"There are no materials."

"Take mine! I'll make another one!"

Jugram Haschwalth said nothing.

He lowered his head and removed the rabbits from the grass rope one by one, arranging them neatly on the ground.

Seven rabbits, lined up in a row.

Then he raised his head and looked toward the darker, denser forest behind Bazz-B.

"There are more over there," Jugram Haschwalth said.

Bazz-B followed his gaze and frowned. "It's too far. You can't hit them."

"I can." Jugram Haschwalth had already raised his slingshot, drawing the bands taut as a stone aimed at the faintly visible ear of a rabbit deep in the forest.

"If you hit it, you win."

The stone flew out.

Jugram Haschwalth stood still, sword and shield hanging at his sides.

The butterflies slowly beat their wings around him, blue scales drifting through the air.

His face was expressionless, but he did not move.

He did not cut the butterflies apart, retreat, or raise his shield.

He merely stood there with his eyes open and his gaze vacant, pinned to that afternoon in the forest.

The illusion lasted only an instant.

Jugram Haschwalth's pupils refocused.

The forest, the slingshot, and Bazzard's smiling face all shattered like pierced glass. The fragments sank into the depths of his consciousness, replaced by the grayish-red sky, the burning Seireitei, and Shuichi's sword.

The blade was already right before him.

Shuichi rushed out from behind the low wall.

He did not know when Jugram Haschwalth would awaken—perhaps in one second, perhaps in three, perhaps the butterflies had no effect at all. He only had this one chance.

Jugram Haschwalth made a small hop backward. The movement was slight; he merely pushed lightly against the ground with the sole of his foot, shifting back one step as the blade tip grazed the cloth over his chest.

Shuichi's slash missed.

The instant Jugram Haschwalth landed, his shield was already thrust forward.

Shuichi immediately used Shunpo to retreat.

He landed several steps away, bent at the waist, holding his Zanpakutō in a standard grip before him, its tip pointed at Jugram Haschwalth.

His breathing was ragged.

Not from exhaustion. Something was surging inside him, and the feeling had only appeared moments ago.

The flow of Reiatsu had become irregular, like a once-calm river suddenly striking hidden reefs, forming whirlpools as it alternated between speeding up and slowing down.

Static began sounding in his ears again.

It was like many people talking at once from a great distance. He could not make out the words, but he could feel their frequencies pounding against his senses.

High and low, long and short. Some were sharp as needles, while others were deep as pounding drums.

Shuichi furrowed his brow and gritted his teeth, trying to filter out the noise. But it did not seem external; it felt more like it was welling up from the depths of his own Reiatsu.

Jugram Haschwalth did not pursue.

He stood where he was and shattered the blue butterflies on his body with Reiatsu. He watched them turn into blue Reishi and dissipate before raising his head to look at Shuichi.

There was something new in those eyes—a probing, appraising light that was almost curious.

"Interesting."

There was no hostility in his tone.

It was as though he were saying: You showed me those things. You accomplished something very few people could.

Shuichi said nothing. He remained slightly bent over, his Zanpakutō held before him in a standard grip, its blue blade trembling faintly.

Not from fear, but because the abnormal fluctuations in his Reiatsu would not allow his hand to remain steady.

Saito's voice came from the ground.

She lay on her back in a pool of blood, lifting her head slightly. Her eyes were wide open, and the enormous wound from her right shoulder to her right abdomen still seeped blood.

She could feel it.

Shuichi's Reiatsu was fluctuating abnormally, like flames growing and shrinking in the wind. But more than that, its texture felt as though something inside Shuichi's Reiatsu was struggling, swelling, trying to break out of its shell.

Saito had been a captain for many years and had seen the changes in countless Soul Reapers' Reiatsu, but she could not make sense of Shuichi's.

"What the hell is going on with you?!"

Saito's voice was filled with questioning and confusion.

Shuichi did not answer. He did not know what was happening to him either.

Jugram Haschwalth slowly raised the tip of his sword, pointing it at Shuichi.

Shuichi knew he had to shout those two words. He was not sure whether he could truly make this man flee, nor did he know whether he could call out that name.

But he had to shout it.

"Bankai!"

Having made up his mind, Shuichi shouted those words.

Reiatsu erupted.

It was not like before, fluctuating and rising and falling, growing strong and weak without warning.

Centered on Shuichi's body, his Reiatsu expanded violently outward like a spring compressed to its limit and suddenly released.

Reiatsu burst from his body.

The Reiatsu shockwave spread in every direction, blasting loose stones and dust from the ground and compressing the air into sharp booms.

The shockwave struck Jugram Haschwalth's shield with a heavy sound. It struck Saito's collapsed body, blowing her already-spread purple hair backward.

The burst of Reiatsu lasted only an instant before rapidly withdrawing. The erupted Reiatsu flowed back from every direction, surging into Shuichi's body once more.

The returning Reiatsu was different from before—denser, heavier, steadier, like iron repeatedly forged under heat and hammering, becoming more compact and harder.

Shuichi's Reiatsu stabilized.

Shuichi tightened his grip on his Zanpakutō. Four strands of colored energy appeared around the blade, different-colored threads of light spreading outward from its core, intertwining, blending, and reflecting one another.

The material of the blade itself also changed. It no longer possessed the texture of metal, becoming instead a translucent, glazed crystal.

Then the name appeared.

He did not hear it, see it, nor did anyone tell it to him.

It simply appeared in Shuichi's mind, like a flower rising from beneath the water's surface. It had always been there, submerged in the deepest part of his consciousness, only now rising for him to see. Complete, clear, and undeniable.