A somewhat familiar voice drifted over on the wind.
The flames flickered.
Kūkaku Shiba looked up and saw someone emerge from the dark forest. He stepped into the firelight, bringing his face into view, and his long silver hair looked as though mercury flowed across its surface.
"Yo." Shiraishi raised a hand in greeting.
"Hadō #4, Byakurai."
Blue-white electricity flickered at her fingertip, then shot out in a bolt.
Shiraishi turned his head aside to dodge. A few strands of hair drifted down as he stared at her in astonishment. "Hey, it's me, Shiraishi! It's only been a few days. Don't you recognize me?"
"Shiraishi is exactly who I'm hitting!"
Kūkaku Shiba let out a furious shout, leaped up from the stone block, and closed in. Wreathed in dense Reiatsu, she threw a fierce left straight without holding anything back.
Shiraishi deftly dodged without striking back, utterly bewildered. Why was she attacking him out of nowhere?
Was Aizen pulling strings behind the scenes?
Before he could figure it out, Kūkaku Shiba came at him with a right hook, then tightened her abdomen and drove a hard right kick at his chest.
Shiraishi dodged the fist but couldn't evade the foot, so he crossed both hands in front of his chest.
Thump. Her bare foot wore no shoe, and the dust on its sole left a small footprint on his left palm.
He flew backward like a cannonball, his feet leaving the ground as he sailed hundreds of meters, smashing through who knew how many towering trees along the way.
He clawed at the air with both hands, creating two visible white streams of turbulent Reishi before he finally stopped himself.
The broken trees had yet to hit the ground.
Kūkaku Shiba used Shunpo to rush in front of him. She performed a 365-degree Thomas flare in midair, her cloak and long beige skirt flying as her pale right leg blended into the bright moonlight and chopped down like a guillotine.
Shiraishi could take no more. His right hand closed around her ankle, and heavy Reiatsu passed into his palm. He inevitably dropped to the ground.
The remaining stumps were crushed to splinters. His feet slammed into the earth with a muffled boom that echoed through the mountains at night, unleashing a gale no weaker than a category-nine typhoon that swept up years' worth of fallen leaves.
The broken trees crashed into other trees, and the gale swept away their emerald leaves. Mixed with countless withered yellow leaves, they swirled above the forest before pouring down like heavy rain.
The moonlight was still and silent.
Shiraishi slowly stood up, keeping his grip on her ankle and raising her right leg above her shoulder, leaving her looking as if she were practicing standing splits. "Now, shouldn't you tell me why you attacked me?"
"Because you're too full of yourself! You investigated on your own without telling me. There's a limit to how much you can look down on me!"
Kūkaku Shiba was so angry that the two bowling balls beneath her short top looked ready to bounce out. Her eyes blazed. She wasn't some frail girl who needed protecting.
Shiraishi was dumbfounded. "What did I investigate without telling you?"
"Can you say you didn't come here to investigate Takehiko Tsunayashiro?"
"Who's that?"
Shiraishi might as well have had a question mark written on his face. He at least knew that Tsunayashiro Tokinada was a scumbag and a pervert.
But Takehiko was beyond his knowledge.
Kūkaku Shiba could tell from his expression that he wasn't pretending. Puzzled, she asked, "Then why are you here?"
"I came with two friends to look for Dragon Lantern Fungus, and who knew I'd run into you? I was going to say hello and mooch a dinner, but you threw Kidō and Hakuda at me."
Shiraishi recounted what had happened to him with a disgruntled look.
Kūkaku Shiba stared blankly for a moment. Her angry expression vanished as she realized she had misunderstood him, and she couldn't help laughing. "Haha, sorry, sorry. I misunderstood. Ah, this is embarrassing. I thought you'd come here looking for Dragon Lantern Fungus because you wanted to infiltrate the Tsunayashiro branch family's compound."
Shiraishi said irritably, "Explain yourself. What exactly happened?"
Kūkaku Shiba spread her hands. "You're such a pervert. You actually want me to keep talking to you in this position?"
"Oh, I forgot." Shiraishi reluctantly let go, allowing her foot to return to the ground. "Now you can tell me why."
"You're hungry too, so let's talk while we eat."
Kūkaku Shiba was thinking about the meat roasting over there. If it burned while they talked, that would be a huge waste.
She used Shunpo to return to the campfire, where the meat was sizzling, then picked up a skewer and handed it to Shiraishi across from her. "Come on, stop scowling. I already said I was wrong. Be the bigger person and don't be so petty."
Shiraishi took the skewer and bit off a piece. "Let's hear your explanation first."
"I wanted to find Dragon Lantern Fungus and use offering it as medicine as a pretext to get into the Tsunayashiro branch family's compound and investigate Takehiko Tsunayashiro."
Kūkaku Shiba's face turned serious as she spoke. "I suspect that bastard deliberately got my big brother killed and stole his body for the Hollowfication Experiment."
Hearing that, Shiraishi set aside his displeasure and asked, "Wasn't your big brother killed by a Hollow?"
"That Hollow was very likely modified by Takehiko Tsunayashiro. That's why it had two special abilities."
Kūkaku Shiba didn't know much about Hollows. She focused on fireworks and rarely got involved in Soul Reapers' purification of Hollows.
But she had an uncle who knew about such things: Isshin Shiba, captain of the Tenth Division.
He had been shocked to learn that the nephew he was so proud of had died at a Hollow's hands. When he also heard that someone had sneaked up to the funeral, he keenly sensed that something wasn't quite right.
"Uncle thought that guy hadn't come for you, but for my big brother's body. The investigation afterward proved Uncle was right."
At that point, Kūkaku Shiba bowed to him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have suspected you of hiding something.
"But if you didn't know anything, you shouldn't have acted like there was a whole story behind you. You made me misunderstand you once, then twice."
The two misunderstandings referred to her initial mistake of thinking Shiraishi knew the infiltrator.
The second was her belief that Shiraishi had hidden the news of her big brother's death to protect her and investigate on his own.
That was behavior she could never tolerate.
Shiraishi finally understood that his flapping butterfly wings had prompted Isshin and Kūkaku to suspect that her big brother hadn't been killed by a Hollow, but had been secretly murdered.
As the two investigated, Aizen noticed something was amiss and devised a plan to pin the blame on Takehiko Tsunayashiro, while also drawing Shiraishi, the source of it all, into it.
Having figured that out, Shiraishi couldn't leave it alone. He said, "Help me find Dragon Lantern Fungus here, and I'll investigate the Tsunayashiro branch family's compound for you. What do you think?"
Kūkaku Shiba frowned. "Takehiko Tsunayashiro graduated with Shin'ō Academy's fourth class and once served as the Fifth Division's Third Seat. He's no weakling."
"Don't worry. No one knows more about concealing Reiatsu than I do."
She still shook her head repeatedly. "There are Reishi traps in the branch family's compound. You don't know your way around, so it would be easy to fall into one. It wouldn't be good if you put them on alert."
"It's fine. You just need to help me find Dragon Lantern Fungus. I promise I'll take care of everything else for you."
Compared with looking for Dragon Lantern Fungus, scouting the Tsunayashiro branch family's compound was clearly more fun.
Back when Shiraishi played Assassin's Creed, he had always wanted to experience what it felt like to be an assassin.
Seeing how determined he was, Kūkaku Shiba said helplessly, "All right. Be careful."