"What the hell is the Eleventh Division up to?" Marechiyo Ōmaeda yawned.
Several members of the Second Division's second unit, the Patrol Corps, and fifth unit, the Inner Court Corps, followed behind him. At first, they were only a small squad, but as he passed through street after street and turned corner after corner, the procession behind him snowballed.
The Inner Court Corps mobilized on a message sent from deep within the barracks. It spread in every direction through coded signal points only the Second Division could recognize, and members scattered throughout Seireitei set aside their work and converged on a single location as quickly as possible.
Some leaped down from sentry posts at the Supervision Tower, some slipped from the shadows on the rooftops of noble estates, and others turned back from patrol routes near Rukongai. Dressed in matching, tight-fitting black uniforms, their masks covered their mouths and noses, leaving only two narrow slits for their eyes. They closed in on the Eleventh Division from every direction.
Before long, the Inner Court Corps had completely sealed off the Eleventh Division's perimeter.
The squad members inside the barracks had no idea what was happening.
They had only just recovered from the violent tremors. Several unfathomably deep fissures had opened in the training ground's sand, faint wisps of white smoke still rising from their edges. A strong, scorched stench lingered in the air, as though stone had been melted.
A group of young squad members gathered at the edge of the training ground, pointing at the fissures.
"Did you guys see that light just now?"
"Yeah, yeah! It nearly blinded me. It shot up from the captain's quarters."
"What the hell was that? The reiatsu nearly crushed the breath out of me."
"No idea. It seemed to come from the