Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—
Several figures flashed to Tsuna's side in quick succession.
Other than Mashiro Kuna and Hachigen Ushōda, the rest of the Visored had surrounded Tsuna. Every one of them had drawn their Zanpakutō and pointed the blades at him.
"Oh? Are the rest of you joining in too?" Tsuna said with a smile. "I'm happy to oblige."
"We can't help it, kid. Even a leader has to listen to the group once in a while."
Shinji Hirako pressed down the small cap on his head and slowly drew his Zanpakutō.
The meaning was obvious enough.
The Visored intended to get payback for Kensei Muguruma.
"Who the hell made you the leader, baldy?!" Hiyori barked at Shinji, clearly displeased. Still, considering the situation, she restrained herself from immediately smacking him with her sandal.
"Don't worry about the details." Shinji pointed his blade at Tsuna. "Surrender quietly. As long as Kensei's fine, we won't hurt you."
Mashiro and Hachigen had gone to check on Kensei's condition. It shouldn't be long before they got word back.
"Relax. Kensei should be fine," Tsuna said, tilting his head toward his left arm. "I didn't even use half my power."
Only then did Shinji notice that the sun-like disc on Tsuna's left arm still retained well over half its flames. Out of the ten torches in total, Tsuna had only used four to hit Kensei so hard he'd disappeared from sight.
"As for surrendering…" Tsuna took a somewhat reluctant step forward. "I'm still looking forward to seeing your Hollowfication."
The Visored tensed at once.
Everyone there knew Tsuna still had a great deal of power left. Even Kensei's Bankai hadn't been able to withstand him. The strength Tsuna still had in reserve was enough to threaten anyone present.
Shinji reacted the fastest. He had seen with his own eyes how Tsuna's injuries had regenerated, which meant ordinary damage wouldn't be all that effective. If that was the case, then—
Shinji reversed his Zanpakutō and began to chant.
"Collapse, Sakanade."
A hand-sized ring appeared on the hilt of his sword, and five small circular holes opened along the blade. Hooking a finger through the ring, Shinji spun Sakanade around.
A strange scent slipped into Tsuna's nose.
The next moment, the entire world flipped upside down.
Heaven and earth traded places.
The Visored were standing upside down in the sky, looking down at him.
It was a reversed world.
"You were able to call my name backward, so you should know what my ability does, right?" Shinji said as he strolled casually across the sky. "Welcome to the inverted world. Until we've confirmed Kensei's condition, you can just stay here—"
Before Shinji could finish speaking, his face suddenly looked as though it had taken a heavy blow.
His eyes bulged.
Blood sprayed from his mouth as he fell straight out of the sky.
Tsuna's view shifted again.
The world righted itself. Heaven and earth returned to normal. The Visored were still standing around him on the ground.
The Shinji who had gone flying was the one Tsuna had just punched away.
Shinji flipped neatly in midair and landed, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth in disbelief.
"How is that possible?"
"Baldy, your illusion got seen through. I told you that little trick wouldn't work," Hiyori said, never missing a chance to insult Shinji. "I say we just cut him down. Kubikiri Orochi."
Her Zanpakutō resembled a serrated saw. Unlike Shinji's bizarre Sakanade, hers was a straightforward offensive type.
"Instinct, that's all," Tsuna said calmly.
The moment Shinji started strolling upside down in the sky, Tsuna had felt him move right beside him. Seeing that Shinji was the only one acting strange, Tsuna hadn't hesitated to throw a punch.
Shinji was still trying to process how Tsuna had seen through the inversion when the hot-tempered Hiyori charged at Tsuna with her Zanpakutō raised.
Lisa, Rose, and Love all moved as well.
No matter how they looked at it, they couldn't just let a former lieutenant like Hiyori go charging at a Bankai-released Tsuna by herself.
But just as the Visored moved, all of them abruptly stopped and tilted their heads as though listening.
Tsuna recognized the fluctuation of Hachigen's spiritual pressure. Combined with the Visored's reactions, he immediately understood what was happening.
Bakudō #77: Tenteikūra.
A long-range communication Kidō. Hachigen must have confirmed Kensei's condition and was relaying the message.
As soon as they finished listening, every Visored's face changed.
Anxiety and urgency appeared all at once.
And Hiyori, being incapable of hiding what she was thinking, snapped out loud:
"Move it! Kensei's gone berserk after Hollowfying!"
In an instant, every member of the Visored turned away from Tsuna and headed toward the direction from which the Tenteikūra message had come.
From deeper inside the warehouse, a violent wave of Kensei's spiritual pressure was surging toward them.
From Hiyori's words alone, Tsuna immediately grasped the situation.
Most likely, when Kensei had taken that Sunshine Counter head-on, the Hollow power inside him had forcibly erupted to help him withstand the blow and heal the damage.
As for why Kensei had lost control, that was still unclear.
Was he too badly injured?
Had he burned through his spiritual pressure too quickly and lost the ability to suppress the Hollow?
Or had he simply never mastered Hollowfication while in Bankai state?
Tsuna instantly became interested.
This was exactly why he had come to see the Visored in the first place—to witness how other people's Hollowfication worked.
He grinned.
"Hollowfication? Perfect."
"Wait!"
Shinji tried to stop him—he had no interest in letting an outsider add to the chaos in a situation like this—but before the word had fully left his mouth, Tsuna had already vanished.
Shinji could hardly believe what he had just seen.
He hadn't even caught a glimpse of Tsuna's movement.
What had that been?
Was that Shunpo?
It had the feel of Shunpo, yet at the same time, it wasn't Shunpo at all. Worse still, Shinji realized that his own Shunpo couldn't catch up to Tsuna.
Which meant Tsuna could already defeat the Visored on speed alone.
For the moment, Shinji buried that realization.
No matter what, they needed to catch up and restrain Kensei first.
If that brat Tsuna got too heavy-handed and accidentally killed Kensei, it would be a disaster.
---
Deeper within the warehouse, a white humanoid monster was rampaging and smashing apart everything in sight.
If not for the bladed knuckle-weapons still clenched in its hands and the ribbon-like attachments trailing behind it, it would have been nearly impossible to recognize it as Kensei Muguruma.
Tsuna's guess had been right.
Kensei had entered Hollowfication while still in Bankai, and the result was total loss of control.
Near him, Mashiro Kuna was already wearing her mask and dressed in her green skintight suit. She kept striking dramatic superhero poses as she tried to stop Kensei, but the difference in their strength was too great. She couldn't even get close.
Hachigen had just thrown up a Kidō barrier in front of Mashiro to stop Kensei's wild assault.
It didn't even last a second.
Kensei's fist blade tore through it like tofu.
The barrier was useless.
It wasn't that Hachigen hadn't considered using Bakudō to bind the berserk Kensei. The problem was that, in this state, Kensei was not only monstrously strong—his movement had also taken on something like Sonído layered over his Shunpo.
He was far too fast, and far too slippery.
The moment Tsuna arrived and saw Mashiro and Hachigen being driven back by Hollowfied Kensei, he didn't hesitate.
With one Shunpo, he stepped in front of Mashiro and caught Kensei's attack with a raised hand.
"You—!"
Mashiro was just about to demand what the hell Tsuna thought he was doing after causing all this when he cut her off.
"Hirako and the others are on their way. I'll handle things here for now."
Without waiting for her reply, Tsuna fought Kensei head-on while using the boosters under his feet to move around, gradually pulling Kensei's attention away from Mashiro and drawing him off.
Strength and speed—both have increased dramatically.
As he exchanged blows with the Hollowfied Kensei, Tsuna continued his internal assessment.
Not only that, every punch from Hollowfied Kensei contained terrifying explosive force. That forced Tsuna to spend one of the flames on his bracelet just to heal the injuries he was taking from each exchange.
On the other hand, every time Kensei damaged him, it also lit additional flames on the bracelet.
The result was a strange balance:
the flames on Tsuna's bracelet kept hovering in equilibrium even as they fought.
Tsuna could clearly tell that Hollowfied Kensei was using Tekken Tachikaze better than Kensei himself had. Every blow erupted with serious destructive power.
By comparison, if Kensei were fully conscious, the same attacks wouldn't have put nearly this much pressure on Tsuna.
If Tsuna had to rate him—
Hollowfied Kensei was probably worth eight "Kenseis," maybe more.
"That guy…!"
By the time Tsuna and Hollowfied Kensei had settled into a deadlock, Shinji and the others had arrived.
At a glance they saw Kensei locked in a back-and-forth with Tsuna.
Even they had never seen a Hollowfication like this.
At most, they had seen Kensei Hollowfy while in Shikai.
That was exactly why the Visored had always feared going further. They understood the terror of Hollowfication too well to risk combining it with Bankai.
"Tsuna! Keep him tied up like that! We'll bind Kensei ourselves!" Shinji shouted.
At his command, every member of the Visored, whether skilled in Kidō or not, fired off whatever Bakudō they could manage.
Bakudō #30: Shitotsu Sansen.
Bakudō #4: Hainawa.
Bakudō #61: Rikujōkōrō ×2.
Bakudō #63: Sajō Sabaku.
Bakudō #75: Gochūtekkan.
Six binding spells fell on Kensei one after another.
To maximize speed, every one of them was cast without incantation.
Tsuna, to his credit, immediately disengaged with a burst from the thrusters under his feet, giving the bindings a clear shot.
Why was Tsuna allowing the Visored to interrupt his observation?
Because he had already decided that this level of Bakudō would never be enough to stop Kensei in his current state.
Judging from their exchange just now, Kensei's power was still climbing.
One chain of Kidō restraints after another wrapped around him, trussing him up thoroughly.
Then five massive iron pillars crashed down from above, pinning each of his limbs and torso so that it looked, at least on the surface, as though he had been completely subdued.
"What are you planning to do now?" Tsuna asked with genuine curiosity.
"We can only wait for Kensei to regain his senses on his own," Shinji replied. "He's already experienced Hollowfication before. He should snap out of it soon enough."
That was how the Visored had learned to master Hollowfication in the first place:
If you endured it, you gained control.
If you failed and became a Hollow, then the only option left was to kill you.
"Really?" Tsuna said, pointing at the pinned Kensei. "I don't think so."
More and more white fluid was spreading up Kensei's arms, gradually covering the bladed fists of his Bankai.
If this kept up, even Kensei's Bankai itself would be swallowed up by the Hollowfication.
"That doesn't look good," Shinji admitted.
He could feel Kensei's spiritual pressure growing ever more violent. Even the five giant iron pillars had begun to tremble.
"Hiyori! Go get Urahara, now!"
"Why me, baldy?!" Hiyori shouted angrily.
"Because your Bakudō sucks the most! Move! At this rate Kensei's going to die!" Shinji barked back, immediately layering two more Bakudō onto Kensei.
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