In the very next instant, Yamamoto-Taichou drew his sword.
The blade erupted with such overwhelming fire that it seemed to devour the air itself. The wave of heat that burst outward carried a destructive force even more oppressive than a captain-level Bankai. It was the oldest and most powerful Zanpakutō, Ryujin Jakka. The flames rose like living walls, vast and merciless, closing around Sosuke Aizen, Kaname Tosen, and Gin Ichimaru as though the battlefield itself had decided to swallow them whole.
"So the plan is to seal Aizen's movements right from the start?"
A great many people immediately understood what Yamamoto-Taichou was aiming for. If Aizen could be pinned down, even for a few moments, then the gap between the two sides would shrink. And in a situation like this, even the smallest difference could mean survival.
"Oh my, so now we can't move at all, huh?" Gin Ichimaru said, still wearing that same relaxed, ill-intentioned smile, without the slightest hint of urgency on his face. Tilting his eyes to the side, he asked, "What do we do now, Captain Aizen?"
"It doesn't matter."
Sosuke Aizen's voice was calm and motionless, like the surface of a lake untouched by wind.
"This battle does not require my intervention."
Seeing the three traitors temporarily trapped by the flames, the fans supporting the protagonists' side finally let out a breath. It was not real relief. Only a brief pause in the despair. Even so, that alone already felt precious.
"Two per group. Two captains for each Espada. Commander, please don't move yet. We still don't know what kind of trick Aizen is planning!"
Sajin Komamura's shout cut sharply through the chaos.
Without Bankai, he, Toushiro, and Soi Fon simply had no way of facing an Espada one-on-one. Their only option was to make up for the gap with numbers. Even that, however, felt painfully thin.
But the enemy had no intention of giving them time.
The first to move was Harribel, now wielding the power that had been taken from Toushiro. The moment her sword moved, a dragon of ice roared into existence, twisting through the air in spiraling frost as it crashed down toward the battlefield.
Toushiro's face darkened.
For the first time in his life, he was seeing his own Bankai from the enemy's side.
The feeling was vile.
It was like watching a piece of his own soul being wielded by the wrong hands.
At the same time, Komamura's black giant and Soi Fon's deadly armament were also turned against their former allies. The fear of having their Bankai stolen again forced the Gotei 13 to fight using only sealed blades or Shikai. And because of that, the battle had barely begun before it started slipping entirely to one side.
Shunsui Kyoraku and Jushiro Ukitake, two veterans who had survived more than a century of war, relied on the most valuable thing they still had left: experience. With measured movements, calm judgment, and impeccable timing, they circled Lilynette, Starrk's fracción, trying to carve out a path to the true target.
Even with Soi Fon's explosive power in her hands, Lilynette still had one clear weakness. That weapon was lethal, devastating, designed to decide everything in a single strike. It was never meant for a prolonged battle. Shunsui realized that the instant he slipped past the first shot using his sword's deceptive ability, and Ukitake understood it at the same time.
All they needed was one opening.
Just one.
The two captains charged Starrk together.
"What a pain..." he muttered, scratching his head with genuine annoyance. "I've never really been good at using other people's powers."
Then he pulled another medallion from inside his clothes.
In the next instant, two rows of enormous blades burst from the ground.
Before the stunned eyes of the shinigami, those blades scattered into countless petals, billions of shining fragments swirling through the air like a storm of flowers too beautiful to be real.
For one second, it was almost beautiful.
In the next, it became a slaughter.
Shunsui and Ukitake were swallowed by the dancing petals before they could react. When the storm passed, both men were still standing through sheer instinct alone, their bodies covered in dozens, hundreds of fine cuts. Blood soaked through their uniforms in silence, and for the first time, those two men - so seasoned, so difficult to bring down - looked fragile.
"Captain Kyoraku! Captain Ukitake!"
Toushiro shouted, but he barely had time to finish.
"You still have time to worry about others?"
Harribel's cold voice fell over him like ice.
When Toushiro looked up, all he saw was her closing in. With wings of ice spread wide behind her, Harribel was already in front of him. Her sword thrust forward in a straight, merciless line, piercing deep into his abdomen. At the same time, frost spread outward in crossing lines, forming a gigantic crystalline cross that locked him in place.
The frozen prison closed around him like a sentence.
"So this is the level of a captain?" Harribel said coldly, without the slightest change in tone. "Pathetic."
"Captain Toushiro! Damn it!"
Komamura and Soi Fon, who were already struggling just to hold off Baraggan in front of them, felt their blood run cold. But before either of them could move, the enormous black warrior swung its colossal blade and hurled them from the sky with a single blow, smashing them back into the earth.
"Pathetic."
Baraggan watched it all from a throne of bones, his body reclined with the natural arrogance of an ancient king. One hand lazily turned the stolen medallion. The other propped up his face, as if this entire war were nothing more than a mediocre performance put on for his amusement.
In front of their screens, the audience could barely believe what they were seeing.
Everything was happening far too fast.
The opening of the episode had not even reached its halfway point, and the Gotei 13 had already been torn apart to this extent. This was not a balanced fight. It barely even felt like a battle. It was a systematic crushing.
The lieutenants, at least, still had one small advantage: most of them did not wield Bankai, so the medallions' power did not affect them in quite the same way. Under normal conditions, they would still have been able to fight the Espadas' subordinates.
Under normal conditions.
But this battle had long since gone beyond that.
One of Harribel's fracción released the Bankai Kaname Tosen had stolen from Mayuri in Hueco Mundo. And that alone was enough to turn the fight into an execution. The golden creature, grotesque and profane, descended upon the lieutenants with monstrous venom, and what followed was a sequence of broken screams, collapsing bodies, and limbs convulsing against the ground.
Within moments, with the sole exception of Yamamoto-Taichou, the Gotei 13 was on the verge of annihilation.
"Ha! Is that all? These people are way too weak!"
Harribel's three subordinates looked down at the lieutenants sprawled before the monstrous golden creature and threw back their heads in laughter, drunk on absolute advantage. At their feet, the wounded twisted and writhed, defeated by poison before death had even reached them. And when they raised their weapons to deliver the killing blow, the hearts of everyone watching seemed to stop.
That was when someone moved.
The sea of fire erupted.
The golden creature let out a shrill, distorted cry, almost childlike, yet so grotesque it sent chills down the spine. Its entire body began to melt beneath the impossible heat, turning into a pulsing liquid mass before evaporating completely.
"My apologies, Mayuri," said the figure emerging from the flames, walking slowly, carrying the calm, crushing presence of someone who had never needed to prove anything to anyone. "Destroying it was my only option."
It could only be him.
Yamamoto-Taichou.
The fire reflected in the old commander's eyes as if hell itself had chosen to dwell there.
"That old bastard... he destroyed the Bankai Lord Aizen gave us..."
Consumed by rage, one of Harribel's subordinates drew her blade and rushed toward him. Yamamoto-Taichou did not even grant her a glance. To him, she was no more than dust drifting across his path.
His body vanished.
In the next moment, he appeared in the sky again, fast as a flash of lightning.
His sword came down.
The black giant raised an arm on pure instinct to block the strike - and in the very next second, that arm was severed clean off.
There was no exchange.
No resistance.
Only one cut.
Only one crushing difference in power.
Yamamoto-Taichou's spiritual pressure flooded the entire battlefield. It was not merely strength. It was age, authority, and a fury that had been held in check for centuries. It was as if every ruin, every corpse, every flame, and every cry in that place had bowed their heads before him.
On the ground, gravely wounded, Shunsui and the others forced their eyes open. Even drenched in blood, they still tried to rise, bracing their own weight with a stubbornness that bordered on absurd. Shunsui let out a dry, weary, bitter laugh.
"Ah... so the old man Yamamoto is truly angry. The last time he looked this terrifying... must have been a thousand years ago."
Until then, the Gotei 13 had been sinking into despair. The feeling of defeat had become so complete that hardly anyone could picture a way out anymore. But now, with Yamamoto-Taichou in motion, something began to flare back to life inside them.
It was hope.
Raw, dangerous, unstable.
But hope nonetheless.
In front of the screens, the reactions exploded instantly.
"The old man is insane!"
"He shows up and immediately destroys two captain-level Bankai!"
"What's the point of stealing Bankai? He's wiping everything out with just Shikai!"
"I thought once five Bankai were stolen, this war was over. And in five minutes, two of them already got erased. So what are we even scared of now?"
"Don't celebrate too early. Aizen still hasn't made his move."
And that was the one detail no one could ignore for long.
Because at the center of it all, trapped within the walls of fire, Sosuke Aizen still stood motionless.
Watching.
Waiting.
Yamamoto-Taichou then turned toward the three strongest Espada.
His sword burned so fiercely that the very image around it seemed to warp.
"So you were that pleased just because you stole the Bankai of a few children who have yet to mature?" he said, his voice hoarse and savage, his eyes narrowing into blazing slits. "Come at me all at once!"
The roar crashed through the battlefield like thunder.
The expressions of the three Espada changed at once.
Toushiro's ice dragon, Biakuya Kuchiki's storm of petals, and the mutilated black giant all charged Yamamoto-Taichou together in a simultaneous assault that would have destroyed almost anyone else on that field.
Then came the scene that left everyone speechless.
A pillar of fire shot up into the heavens.
It was not merely massive. Not merely violent. It was absolute.
The flames rose into an impossible barrier between Yamamoto-Taichou and the three stolen Bankai, and before any of them could break through, hell itself swallowed them whole. Ice, petals, black steel - everything was dragged into the inferno and reduced to nothing.
People in front of their screens stared with mouths hanging open.
Everyone knew Yamamoto-Taichou was strong.
But this had gone far beyond anything remotely reasonable.
When Sosuke Aizen cut down captains back in the Soul Society arc, it had been terrifying - but that had still been a sequence, one fall after another, each victory setting up the next.
Yamamoto-Taichou did worse.
He annihilated three captain-level powers in a single blow.
And in that instant, for the very first time since the start of that hell, the war seemed to pause for one brief second just to acknowledge a brutal truth:
the most terrifying man on the battlefield might not have been the traitor watching in silence.
It might have been the old man holding the sword of fire.
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