Chapter 020: Running on Empty
A dual chant.
By definition, it meant taking two separate Kido and weaving them together, running both incantations in compressed, roughshod form simultaneously to fire two completely different techniques inside a single window.
Sound simple?
It wasn't.
Not even close.
Because to pull it off at all, the first requirement was an exceptionally deep understanding of both techniques involved. You had to know precisely what each line of the incantation was doing, and exactly what happened when you cut it short or pushed past its edges. Every reduction, every compression: you had to understand what you were sacrificing before you could survive the attempt.
Think of two Kido as two pieces of a lock and key, both jagged, neither fitting cleanly.
The gaps between them had to be forced into alignment, made to hold. Only then could you push reishi through the combined shape and have it converge into something real, something that would actually reach out and affect the world.
That was what a dual chant demanded.
And it was not easy.
In the original story, Rukia Kuchiki had used something similar during her fight in Hueco Mundo against the Arrancars. Worth keeping in mind that at that point, Rukia was already operating at a level that would have let her achieve Bankai.
For someone at that tier, a dual chant might look like showing off. A flourish. A technical trick that didn't cost much and impressed the room.
But for an ordinary spirit? For an ordinary Shinigami?
And more than that.
This was an Academy student.
Which meant that from the moment he'd first encountered Kido to right now, his entire study time might add up to a few years at most.
A few years.
Yoruichi Shihoin worked through this in silence. She swallowed once, then again, and finally let two short syllables out under her breath.
"...Genius?"
And what was the state of this genius right now?
Absolutely miserable.
Matsushita Yusuke could feel it: an intense, violent tearing sensation running through him unlike anything he'd experienced before.
Two different incantations. And the compatibility between Hado and Bakudo was nowhere near as clean as he'd assumed going in.
In theory, he was working from one power source. In practice, he'd forced it in two directions at once, running both techniques simultaneously.
The result was that he couldn't properly control either of them.
Matsushita Yusuke felt like he was holding the reins of two wild horses at a dead gallop. The bridles were on. He was up on their backs. He was technically in control.
But these horses had never agreed to be ridden.
They were bucking, twisting, fighting him every second, and he could feel his head trying to split down the middle just to keep both of them from going off course.
Under that tearing pressure, something in Matsushita Yusuke went stubborn.
Screw it. If Rukia can pull this off, so can I. These two aren't walking away.
BANG!!
His reishi detonated outward.
A visible shockwave tore through the air around him, turbulence rippling out from his body like the surface of water after a stone hits it. The air shuddered and swayed. Every student in the field felt it and turned to look.
Matsushita Yusuke had become, without any question, the only thing anyone was watching.
Could he do it?
Did that even need asking?
He raised his right hand. Index and middle fingers pressed together and extended forward. He poured everything he had into it and shouted.
"Look upon yourself with horror — and burn!!"
Bakudo #9: Geki.
Crimson light erupted from his fingertips, cut through the air in a flat streak, and landed.
Unlike standard binding Kido, this beam was dense, compressed and hard, carrying a tensile strength that wouldn't give. It wrapped around both Hollows' limbs in the same instant, locked them in place, and the weight of it pulled them completely off balance.
Boom.
Two enormous bodies hit the ground.
The sound was the most encouraging thing anyone had heard in the last five minutes.
"They're down! Get in there, finish them off—"
Whoever shouted that got smacked across the face by an older student before the sentence was fully out.
"Don't move! The Kido isn't done yet!"
Right.
Because the reishi rolling off Matsushita Yusuke was not fading. It was not slowing down. It was doing exactly the opposite, building, pressing in on itself, hot and coiling, the surface of it moving the way liquid does just before it hits a boil.
Cold sweat cut a line down his cheek. His heart was hammering hard enough that he could feel it in his jaw.
Everything his body was sending him said the same thing: this cannot continue.
If he pushed past whatever the threshold was, there would be a cost.
But he was past the point of pulling back.
He pressed on.
"All creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Truth and temperance, upon this sinless wall of dreams unleash but slightly the wrath of your claws!"
At the end of that incantation, something gathered in his palms that had no right to be there.
Light and heat. Absolutely unreasonable quantities of both.
He didn't hesitate. He turned his eyes to the two shapes in the distance, already clawing their way back upright, their limbs dragging against the binding's fading hold.
Now.
He threw everything into it and called the name at full volume.
"Hado #33: Sokatsui!!"
A breath.
For just one moment the air seemed to pull backward, as if drawing in a sharp inhale before something very loud.
And then the detonation tore through everything.
Two columns of crimson fire blasted outward from his palms and immediately wrapped around each other, spiraling, climbing, the kind of output that made people step back before they consciously understood why, and drove straight forward like something aimed.
Every student watching went still.
Then —
BANG!!!
The impact landed and light swallowed the world.
Blooming heat and fire consumed everything in the immediate area. Students too close to the edge of the blast never had time to shout. They were simply airborne, tumbling sideways, and the next thing they knew they were on their feet somewhere several meters from where they'd been, checking their hair, discovering their eyebrows had been reduced to thin black residue.
Alive, though. That was the part that mattered.
The impact site?
A shallow depression in the earth roughly ten meters across. Not rubble. Not ruins.
Just gone.
The students gathered at the edge of it in silence.
Hado, as the name suggested, was a category of Kido built for destruction. Everyone knew the principle. Everyone had heard the number.
But there was understanding it in theory, and there was standing at the edge of what it left behind.
"...That was just number thirty-three, right?"
"I've seen an instructor use Sokatsui before. The output was... it wasn't like this."
"Hey. Stop looking at the hole. Look at him."
The figure standing in the field hadn't moved.
Right arm still extended, palm flat, still held out in the follow-through of a strike. The reishi coating his hand, his fingertips, all the way up his forearm hadn't dispersed yet, sitting there glowing, radiating heat that showed no interest in hurting him. More like the last warmth after a fire has burned down to nothing. Like embers.
Somewhere in the final detonation, a spark had caught the cloth tie holding his hair. It burned through quietly and pulled apart, and Matsushita Yusuke's hair came loose and fell around his shoulders.
The expression on his face was completely serious.
Still present. Still focused. The kind of look that said: not now.
Undeniably, objectively, unambiguously cool.
Then.
His eyes rolled back.
Matsushita Yusuke tipped backward, face to the sky, and hit the ground.
Out of fuel.
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