"Listen carefully, Amamiya. You have to watch him like a hawk," Hirako Shinji instructed, grimacing as he adjusted his stance beside Miyako. Wounded and with a Zanpakutō not suited for direct, head-on assault, his role was now to act as the final line of defense for the group's 'brain.'
"But this entire strategy becomes moot if Aizen simply chooses not to rely on Kyōka Suigetsu for this fight," Amamiya Miyako countered, his eyes never leaving the solitary figure of Aizen. In truth, Miyako had agreed to Kyōraku's plan for a deeper reason: to observe and gauge Aizen's progress. The Tercera Espada, Tier Harribel, was still alive, indicating she was no longer required as a catalyst. This meant the Hōgyoku Aizen carried was likely saturated, in a semi-complete state. The next step would be its fusion with the one within Miyako himself. That was the event he was determined to thwart.
As for the idea of them defeating Aizen by simply negating his hypnosis… Miyako held little hope. The man's own power was a mountain they had yet to even scratch.
"Sennen Hyōrō!" Tōshirō Hitsugaya's voice rang out as he closed the distance, a vortex of ice erupting from Hyōrinmaru to engulf the space around Aizen.
Seizing the opening, Sōifon flashed into position behind Aizen with a burst of Shunpo, the stinger of Suzumebachi poised for a lethal strike.
Aizen's response was almost dismissive. He pivoted to face Sōifon, his foot coming up to lightly deflect her thrust, using the momentum to propel himself upward, evading both the spreading ice and the assassination attempt.
It was the opening Komamura Sajin had been waiting for. "Bankai! Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō!" The colossal, armored giant manifested, its monumental sword descending with earth-shattering force towards the airborne Aizen.
Aizen met it with one hand, Kyōka Suigetsu held almost lazily, stopping the gargantuan blade with a jarring clang that echoed across the battlefield.
Yet, the giant's shadow fell across Aizen, and from that pool of darkness, the tip of a blade emerged. Shunsui Kyōraku, utilizing Kageoni, launched his attack from within Aizen's own shadow.
Aizen showed no alarm. As the shadow-blade shot toward him, he simply extended a single finger from the hand gripping his sword, pointing it at the torso of the towering Bankai. "Hadō #1: Shō."
A concussive blast of force, magnified to an absurd degree, erupted from his fingertip. The shockwave struck the chest of Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō, not with damage, but with overwhelming kinetic energy, hurling the entire massive construct backward. As the giant moved, its shadow slid away from Aizen, causing Kyōraku's ambush to stab uselessly into empty air.
"Impossible… My Myō'ō was repelled by a Shō?!" Komamura growled, disbelief warring with rage.
Hitsugaya, however, did not let the opportunity pass. He appeared beneath Aizen's new position, a spire of ice erupting to encase Aizen's legs. With his target seemingly immobilized, Hitsugaya drove Hyōrinmaru forward in a piercing thrust.
"Hitsugaya-taichō, stop! Aizen is not there!" Miyako's urgent warning cut through the Tenteikūra link.
Hitsugaya halted mid-lunge, his muscles screaming in protest. Every one of his senses screamed that Aizen was right there, trapped. But he forced himself to discard them, clinging to the plan. He trusted Miyako.
"Six o'clock, high!" Miyako's voice was sharp.
Hitsugaya reacted instantly, encasing himself in wings of ice. Aizen's blade fell anyway, shearing through half of the frozen shield and sending him into a controlled fall. But even in descent, Hitsugaya fought back. The shattered ice fragments extended explosively, forming a new, thick pillar that encased Aizen once more.
Sōifon was already a blur of motion, Suzumebachi seeking the frozen form.
The moment the ice pillar formed, Aizen's shadow was cast upon it. Kyōraku's form melted from the darkness at its base, his swords aimed for a crippling strike. "The target is Aizen. Do not hesitate, no matter what you see or feel!" Miyako reinforced, anticipating Aizen's tricks.
Hitsugaya's eyes hardened. He leveled Hyōrinmaru at the pillar's center. He would strike.
From the sidelines, Hirako Shinji focused, releasing the sweet scent of Sakanade once more, layering sensory disorientation over the area.
In Kyōraku's perception, his Kageoni strike connected solidly. He knew it wouldn't be fatal, so he moved to lock Aizen down. "Now! Sōifon-fukutaichō, Hitsugaya-taichō!"
Komamura held back, his Bankai too indiscriminate for such close-quarters chaos.
Sōifon's stinger found its mark on the figure within the ice. A black butterfly pattern—the first mark of Suzumebachi's two-strike kill—bloomed. She pivoted instantly for the second, lethal thrust.
"Sōifon-fukutaichō, stop! Your first strike hit Kyōraku-taichō!" Miyako's voice was a cold splash of reality in her mind.
Simultaneously, Hitsugaya's thrust arrived. But the figure in the ice… shimmered. The ice melted away to reveal not Aizen, but Momo Hinamori, pale and terrified, her eyes wide as she looked directly at him.
"…!" Hitsugaya's heart convulsed. But he remembered the warning, remembered his duty. With a guttural cry, he shut his eyes and drove his blade forward, feeling it pierce through fabric and flesh. A pained gasp, distinctly Momo's, reached his ears, but he twisted the blade, committing to the strike.
"Fall back, all of you! Your attacks never touched Aizen!" Miyako's command was a roar in their mental link. The three Shinigami disengaged instantly, leaping away from the ice pillar.
"A commendable display of resolve. Yet, you still faltered for that critical instant, Hitsugaya-kun." Aizen's calm voice came from the side. The ice pillar he had supposedly been in shattered into harmless mist. He stood perfectly unharmed, not a scratch on him, only a neat slice through the fabric at his waist. Kyōraku's attack had merely sheared his kosode.
"Oh dear, oh dear. Hitsugaya-taichō, Sōifon-fukutaichō, your attacks were frightfully swift," Kyōraku said with a pained chuckle, clutching his own side. Blood welled between his fingers from a precise stab wound, and a matching gash bled on his waist—the results of Sōifon's and Hitsugaya's 'misplaced' strikes.
"How…? I didn't hesitate! I struck!" Hitsugaya's voice was thick with confusion and horror.
"Aizen didn't use his hypnosis when he was frozen," Miyako explained, his voice grim through the link. "He waited until the moment your attacks were about to land. Then, he used Kyōka Suigetsu to alter your perception of direction and target in that final microsecond. You didn't hit him; you hit each other's trajectories."
A chill settled over the group. The plan had been sound, their coordination good, but it was like trying to swat a ghost that could rewrite reality at the moment of impact.
"The concept was not without merit," Aizen conceded, as if critiquing a student's essay. "However, Kyōka Suigetsu can hypnosis you at any moment. You fight by relying on your senses, and those are the very tools I manipulate. Even the subtlest shift in perceived angle is enough. You see? Even when I stand in your midst, you end up slaughtering one another."
Miyako's frown deepened. Complete Hypnosis wasn't just an ability; it was a logical paradox in battle, a weapon that made coordinated group tactics against its user almost suicidal.
"Enough. I have indulged this farce long enough. Let us bring this to its conclusion." With those words, Aizen vanished.
He reappeared directly in front of the towering Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō.
"First…"
Aizen stood before the colossal form of Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō, his sword raised with casual intent. Komamura Sajin, seeing the threat, willed his Bankai to mirror the action, the giant raising its monumental blade in a defensive stance.
Aizen's swing was a study in contemptuous ease. Kyōka Suigetsu descended in a clean arc. There was no monumental clash, only the sound of parting spirit matter. The giant's sword, along with a substantial portion of its arm and torso, was sheared in two. A corresponding, grievous wound tore open across Komamura's own massive chest. With a final, shuddering rumble, the Bankai dissolved into fading light, and Komamura collapsed, a river of blood spilling onto the shattered earth.
"Komamura-taichō!"
A golden flash of fury. Sōifon held nothing back, pushing her Shunpo to its absolute limit. She wished to employ Shunkō, to fight with every ounce of her being, but the loss of an arm to Baraggan's power rendered her full explosive technique untenable. She was reduced to her Zanpakutō's deadly precision.
"The Commander-in-Chief of the Onmitsukidō. To achieve such speed even in your state is worthy of note," Aizen observed, his eyes calmly tracking the multiple afterimages Sōifon created as she closed in from all angles.
"Jinteki o tsukisusume! Suzumebachi!" (Pierce through the flesh! Suzumebachi!)
She and her spectral copies struck as one, Suzumebachi's stinger aimed for vital points. Aizen made no move to evade. The first strike landed cleanly on his forearm, the black butterfly pattern of the Nigeki Kessatsu (Two-Hit Kill) blooming on his white kosode.
"A hit!" Sōifon's mind raced. She didn't retreat. Even if it cost her, the second strike had to connect. She twisted, driving the stinger for the center of the mark.
It landed. Aizen's hand shot out in the same instant, his fingers closing like a vice around her remaining wrist.
"How…?!" Sōifon's cry was one of pure shock. The two-hit kill had failed.
"Your 'certain kill' is a tool for dominating those with inferior spiritual pressure. A Shinigami's battle is, at its core, a contest of reiatsu. The chasm between yours and mine is vast. It was never going to work." His explanation was clinical, a professor stating a basic fact. Then, with a horizontal flick of his sword, he sent her spiraling down, consciousness fleeing. 'He let me hit him… twice. Just to demonstrate the point.' The realization was her last conscious thought.
Having dispatched Sōifon, Aizen appeared beside Shunsui Kyōraku without a sound.
In his assessment, among the remaining Captains, Kyōraku—whose Bankai was an unknown variable—posed the greatest potential threat. Those earlier shadow-strikes had been dangerously precise. Had Aizen not sensed the reiatsu shift and instantly layered a hypnosis to redirect the blow to Kyōraku's own side, that first injury might well have been inflicted by the older Captain. Now, wounded by Hitsugaya's misdirected attack, Kyōraku was at his most vulnerable.
Kyōraku and Hitsugaya, reeling from the speed of the two defeats, tried to lock onto Aizen's presence. He was already behind Kyōraku.
Kyōraku acted on pure instinct. "Kageoni: Shiro!" (Shadow Stitching: White!) He shrugged off his white captain's haori in a fluid motion, leaving only the trim of his innermost garment as white—a minimal target.
Aizen's sword struck the black of Kyōraku's shihakushō. There was no spray of blood, only a strange, hollow sensation, as if the blade had passed through a rule rather than flesh.
However, the area of white on Aizen's own attire was extensive. Kyōraku retaliated with a swing, but Aizen evaded it with minimal movement, his expression one of mild curiosity.
'Terrifying. He can read and counter my movements without even resorting to his Shikai…'
Kageoni was a children's game given lethal form: the one who cut the color they named won. Fortunately, Aizen had never seen this particular Shikai ability. His strike to Kyōraku's back had been nullified by the rules of the 'game'—Kyōraku had called 'White', and had been struck on 'Black'.
But the peculiar, non-physical feedback was a clue. Aizen's mind, a supercomputer of combat data, instantly cross-referenced it with Kyōraku's earlier, seemingly odd words.
"I see. 'White', is it…" Aizen mused, his gaze flicking to the discarded white haori and then to his own pristine robes. The rules became clear.
Tōshirō Hitsugoya lunged in with a Ryūsenka, but Aizen simply wasn't there when the ice dragon erupted.
Though protected by Kageoni's rule, Kyōraku was now bound by its mechanics. He was compelled to speak, his voice strained. "Your turn, Aizen-taichō. Name your color."
It was a gambit. He used ambiguous phrasing, hoping to mislead or buy a fragment of time.
"A most intriguing ability," Aizen acknowledged, his smile deepening. "Then… I shall also choose Shiro."
He vanished. His next swing was not aimed at Kyōraku's minimal white trim, but was a powerful, sweeping strike that capitalized on the contrast. With Kyōraku mostly clad in black and Aizen overwhelmingly in white, the rules of the game amplified the force of Aizen's attack against his designated 'winning' color—which was, paradoxically, himself. The spiritual pressure behind the blow magnified, tearing through Kyōraku's defenses.
A horrific wound opened across Kyōraku's chest, blood gushing forth. He crumpled, consciousness fading.
'He… deduced the complete mechanics on the first exchange…?' It was a final, staggering blow to Kyōraku's strategic confidence before darkness took him. Aizen's genius wasn't just in power; it was in the instantaneous dissection of any rule, any ability, laid before him.