"Tsuna-kun, any additional services come with an extra charge, you know."
Kisuke Urahara, dressed in his dark green outer robe, walked over at an unhurried pace. Trailing behind him was Hiyori, swinging her sandal nonstop like an overbearing supervisor urging him forward.
"Walk faster, baldy!" Hiyori shouted, planting another merciless kick squarely into Urahara's backside and sending him stumbling right up to Tsuna.
"Hiyori, nothing actually happened, did it?" Urahara said helplessly, rubbing his rear. He had sensed Kensei's berserk spiritual pressure disappear quite some time ago, so whether he arrived quickly or not made no real difference to him.
What entered Hiyori's sight was Kensei Muguruma, lying unconscious.
From outward appearances, he really did seem to be fine.
Even though it was clear she'd panicked too soon, Hiyori still let out an irritated "Tch."
"Shopkeeper, don't you offer any after-sales service?" Tsuna asked, completely refusing to fall into Urahara's trap. Then he pointed right at Shinji Hirako. "Besides, they're the ones who called you. You should be charging them."
"You little—"
Hiyori's anger flared up all over again, and she was just about to unload on Tsuna when Lisa Yadōmaru silenced her with an ample, all-natural "seal." Unlike Hiyori, Lisa had actually witnessed the spiritual pressure Tsuna had unleashed earlier. At that level, Tsuna could easily have suppressed all of them by himself. Letting Hiyori keep mouthing off recklessly would only make things worse.
"Kisuke, forget all that and come check on Kensei first," Shinji said. Urahara had been the one who solved the Visored's Hollowfication problem back then, so when it came to this sort of thing, he was the expert.
Urahara took out a strange instrument and scanned Kensei up and down. Very quickly, he reached a conclusion.
"At the moment, Kensei Muguruma is just a bit exhausted. There doesn't seem to be any major problem. If Hachi gives him some Kaidō support, a little rest should be enough."
Once they heard Kensei was fine, the other Visored immediately began doing their own things again.
Rose started humming a tune.
Love Aikawa pulled out a manga.
Lisa, at some point, had already produced one of her favorite erotic magazines and started reading.
Only Mashiro and Hachigen stayed by the unconscious Kensei to tend to him—though Mashiro, noisy as ever, clearly wasn't much help.
"So then, what exactly happened here?" Urahara asked after hearing the general outline from Shinji, theatrically wiping away nonexistent sweat while fanning himself. "That was rather dangerous, Tsuna-kun. You really went overboard."
"Overboard? I already held back," Tsuna said. "Tessai-san can testify to that. Who knew Kensei would be that fragile?"
"Ahaha…" Urahara laughed it off. He had a good sense of how strong Tsuna became after using Bankai, and Kensei really was no match for him.
"By the way," Tsuna asked Shinji, "have you ever tried Hollowfying after Bankai?"
"Hollowfying after Bankai?" Shinji lay back on the ground, looking deeply unenthused. "If that were possible, Kensei wouldn't have gone mad the instant he put the mask on."
"The only one among us who actually tried was Kensei," Shinji recalled. "And it was the same that time too. The moment he Hollowfied in Bankai, he completely lost his mind and started attacking everyone around him."
"But back then his Hollowfication didn't go this far. I had to wear him out using Sakanade before it finally stopped. And because of that, none of us ever tried Hollowfying after Bankai again."
"Our Bankai are too large-scale compared to his, anyway. They'd just end up hurting allies," Shinji said with a helpless shrug.
"Then what's the point of your Hollowfication?" Tsuna asked bluntly. "If you can only use it in Shikai, then doesn't that leave you at the same level as a bunch of lieutenants?"
"Hold on, Tsuna-kid," Shinji said. "It's not that we don't want to try—we just can't. You saw what happened to Kensei. If the rest of us lost control like that, the danger would be even worse."
"No wonder Aizen dismissed you all as failures," Tsuna said with a cold laugh. "If you don't even dare try Bankai Hollowfication, then what gives you the right to point your blades at Aizen? Your Hollowfied Shikai?"
"Aizen! How do you know that name?!"
Tsuna's words instantly reignited the anger of every Visored present. Every one of them glared at him. Aizen was their forbidden name, and Tsuna had dragged it straight out into the open.
"You baldy don't know a damn thing! I'm going to cut Aizen down one day!"
Hiyori charged at Tsuna with her Asauchi in one hand and a sandal in the other, seemingly intent on beating him before she ever got around to taking revenge on Aizen.
But after only two steps, an overwhelming spiritual pressure fell on her. Hiyori had to jam her Asauchi into the ground just to keep herself upright. She couldn't move forward even one more step.
"You can't even withstand this much spiritual pressure, and you're talking about cutting down Aizen? Don't make me laugh."
Hiyori struggled to lift her head, only to meet Tsuna's ice-cold stare.
Tsuna had long since grown sick of Hiyori's explosive temper. A weak loudmouth who only knew how to fly off the handle usually ended up doing nothing but dragging down their allies.
"Enough, Tsunayoshi Sawada. Don't stoop to Hiyori's level."
Shinji stepped in between them, blocking Tsuna's cold gaze and spiritual pressure. Only then was Hiyori finally able to breathe again.
"When it comes to Aizen, Shinigami combat comes down to spiritual pressure," Tsuna said seriously as he stood up. "If you don't even have captain-class spiritual pressure, then don't step onto the battlefield. Otherwise you'll just force your allies to divide their attention protecting you."
Contrary to Tsuna's expectations, Shinji did not get angry.
Instead, his eyes lit up.
"You're going after Aizen too? Then the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We can be allies."
Shinji had already seen Tsuna's strength firsthand. If Tsuna was willing to fight Aizen alongside them, that could only be a good thing.
"Allies? You?" Tsuna laughed. "One of you only plays music, one only reads manga, one is obsessed with dirty magazines, one fantasizes about being a superhero, one has no power and just rages helplessly, and then there's you—the man who hasn't even fully mastered his own Shikai. Becoming your ally? That'd be difficult."
"In the Visored, only that big guy and the one lying on the ground still remember to keep training. The rest of you have all buried yourselves in your hobbies. Do you people actually want revenge?"
Tsuna's words were like blades stabbing directly into each of their hearts.
Had they grown lax because they feared Aizen—or because they had let comfort and hobbies dull them?
Most of the Visored had to admit, at least to themselves, that they had indeed slackened off.
"Can I hear it?" Shinji asked. "Your opinion of my Shikai."
"Do I really need to spell it out?" Tsuna almost laughed from disbelief. "Sakanade—a Zanpakutō that inverts everything. And what did you develop? Just visual inversion. Temperature, the five senses, spiritual pressure, even cognition itself—there's no shortage of things you could invert, and yet all you came up with was the weakest one: sight. I honestly don't know how Sakanade ever acknowledged you. Did a level like this really qualify you to learn Bankai?"
Shinji suddenly felt something stir.
It was his Zanpakutō.
Sakanade had responded to Tsunayoshi's words with recognition.
"…I really did grow complacent," Shinji said, raising his blade levelly in front of him as the others stared in surprise.
Influenced by Shinji, the other Visored also turned to look at their own Zanpakutō.
Nearly a hundred years had passed, and the only meaningful increase in their combat ability had been mastering Hollowfication.
Could they truly claim they were ready to take revenge on Aizen?
Just how terrifying had that man's power become now?
Seeing the Visored fall into thought, Tsuna walked over to the unconscious Kensei and said to Urahara,
"Shopkeeper, let's talk business. I discovered something during my fight with Kensei Muguruma."
"Go on," Urahara said, straightening up at once. Whenever Tsuna shared intelligence, he became deadly serious.
"I sensed Hollow power inside Kensei's Zanpakutō. In other words, that blade simultaneously contains both Shinigami and Hollow power."
"I suspect that with the right training, Kensei Muguruma could potentially master both Bankai and Resurrección."
"Resurrección?" The new term immediately caught Urahara's interest.
"Like Sora Inoue. Once you stripped part of his power away, he took on human form. So by reversing that process—returning his original power to him—he could revert to his strongest state. That's what I call Resurrección."
"And Kensei's Zanpakutō quite clearly contains the same berserk Hollow power he just displayed. If he can successfully master Resurrección, wouldn't that let him bring out that same wild strength whenever he wanted?"
"Interesting. And the others?" Urahara asked.
"They don't have it," Tsuna said. "I suspect this state only forms when someone in Bankai is forced all the way to the brink of Hollowfication, and then knocked unconscious before the Bankai can properly end."
"As everyone knows, Shikai reflects the power of a Shinigami's soul, while Bankai is the concrete manifestation of that power. In a sense, it's the true release of a Shinigami's strength. If you force someone into unconsciousness in that state, then the already-released Zanpakutō gets sealed back down into an Asauchi-like form. I think that's how the Hollow power ended up embedded into that blade."
"Now that's fascinating. I'll be taking this Asauchi back with me, then," Urahara said, picking up Kensei's Zanpakutō and glancing at Shinji.
Shinji had no objection.
Turning back to Tsuna, Urahara continued,
"I've also done some research into the Visored's Hollowfication recently. I've found that the reason they lose control so easily is because they don't actually have a stable source of Hollow power inside themselves. Every time they Hollowfy, they're doing it from their Shinigami state alone."
"So if each of them had a Menos-level Hollow sealed inside them as a power source, perhaps their Hollowfication could become much stronger. It might even let them accomplish the Resurrección you're talking about."
"That is interesting," Tsuna agreed. "But wouldn't sealing a Hollow directly into their bodies be too dangerous? What about sealing it into the Zanpakutō instead? That sort of thing is your specialty, isn't it, shopkeeper?"
When it came to modifying Zanpakutō, Mayuri Kurotsuchi wasn't the only master.
The many forms of Urahara's Shikai, and his Bankai—practically modification incarnate—were proof enough that Kisuke Urahara excelled in altering Zanpakutō as well.
"Hold on, hold on," Shinji cut in. "You two sound like you're discussing something terrifying. Why do I get the feeling you're treating us like experimental material?"
"And whose fault is that? You're too weak. Because of that, I can't even properly train my own Resurrección…" Tsuna shot him a flat look.
"Weak? Come on, I was the former Captain of the Fifth Division. That's a bit much, isn't it?" Shinji objected.
"Exactly," Rose added helpfully at his side, reminding everyone that he had once been Captain of the Third Division.
"You two?" Tsuna snorted. "One of you has a Bankai built for clearing mobs, and the other has 'ears' for a weakness. Are you really that strong?" When it came to Bankai quality, Shinji and Rose had no business boasting. "On the other hand, Love-san—I'm actually pretty interested in the Bankai of that giant hammer of yours."
"My Bankai is too dangerous. I can't use it casually—it'd hurt allies too easily," Love Aikawa explained with surprising patience.
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