PinkSnake - A Shinigami Never Dies - 406
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Chapter 406: The Third Blade
“Muten?” Rukia Kuchiki noticed the grim look on Muten Natsu’s face. “What’s wrong? Did something happen somewhere else?”
“It’s Myōki.” A vein throbbed on Muten Natsu’s forehead. “Myōki and Bokukō used the other Zanpakutō as cover and found Hollowfied Sakanade and the others.”
“Captain Kurotsuchi values his research materials more than most people value their lives. The Research and Development Institute must have some way to deal with them.” Rukia Kuchiki tightened her grip on her Zanpakutō. “Focus on the enemies in front of us. Once we deal with them, we’ll head to the Research and Development Institute to help.”
Muten Natsu raised his eyes toward Tenken and Gonryōmaru.
Taking them down quickly would be anything but easy, especially now that he had lost Myōki and Bokukō.
The only thing he could rely on was...
{Me}
Muten Natsu’s eyes shifted.
A voice had sounded inside his mind.
He didn’t recognize the voice, but the sensation was familiar.
Back when he had been imprisoned in the Nest of Maggots, his Zanpakutō, Bokukō, had also been confiscated and sealed away.
It was only after losing Bokukō that he had heard Myōki calling out to him.
And now... he was hearing another voice.
“I’ll create an opening for you...” Rukia Kuchiki lowered her voice. “Focus on gathering your power. Take one of them down first, and everything afterward will be easier.”
“Wait. I think...” Muten Natsu began.
“You’ve had enough time to talk things over!” Gonryōmaru formed a seal with one hand. “I don’t mind wasting a little more time on you, but standing around doing nothing is getting rather boring.”
Click.
The shrine on Gonryōmaru’s back opened.
Dense black clouds poured out from within, rising into the sky before churning outward and spreading overhead. A dense curtain of rain began to fall.
Rukia Kuchiki immediately sensed something was wrong. “This is...”
“My true power.” Gonryōmaru raised his wooden staff. “Playtime is over.”
Twisting bolts of lightning slithered through the dark clouds like enormous serpents appearing and disappearing from sight.
Gonryōmaru pointed his raised staff forward.
Purple lightning crashed down from the heavens.
BOOM!
The ground was blasted black.
Rukia Kuchiki flickered aside as Sode no Shirayuki appeared beside her. One moved left and the other right, attacking Gonryōmaru from both sides.
“Too slow!”
Gonryōmaru swung his staff.
Five bolts of lightning descended simultaneously.
“Some no mai, Tsukishiro!”
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki called out at the same time.
Two pillars of ice instantly formed around them, sealing each of them inside and blocking the incoming lightning.
Tenken spewed flames from his mouth and swept his enormous Zanpakutō across the battlefield.
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki broke free from the ice pillars a moment beforehand, unleashing a surging wave of cold.
Amid the howling wind and snow, an ice wall appeared, slightly different from the ones they had created before.
Sode no Shirayuki wasn’t particularly skilled at manipulating ice, but that didn’t mean she was incapable of it.
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki used Tsugi no mai, Hakuren together. One released the cold while the other controlled it.
Working in tandem, they formed a sloping wall of ice like a rising wave, meeting Tenken’s blade from the side.
The enormous blade that had been heading straight toward them slid along the upper edge of the ice wall, veered off course, and swept diagonally over their heads.
Muten Natsu shifted his body slightly.
A tremendous Reiatsu suddenly erupted from him, becoming almost tangible as it crushed the ground around him and shattered bricks and stone.
Hearing the voice of another Zanpakutō was an unexpected surprise, but he had no time to communicate with it properly right now.
Rukia Kuchiki’s plan came first.
His abyssal Reiatsu began to contract.
The raindrops falling around Muten Natsu met an invisible resistance, slowing to a crawl as they descended before him.
His sheath trembled faintly.
Muten Natsu forcibly suppressed it.
Still not enough...
More...
{Wrong}
The voice sounded inside his mind again.
Muten Natsu stared fixedly at his target. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
{Name}
Why was it speaking one word at a time...?
“Then tell me your name.” Muten Natsu gradually lowered his stance. The terrifying Reiatsu was now compressed entirely around his own body. Without Myōki, he had to control all that power himself. “And you’d better hurry. I don’t have much attention to spare for you right now.”
{Then}
Muten Natsu: “...?”
Then what?!
The voice in his head fell silent again, as though it had never existed.
Muten Natsu took a deep breath and stopped paying attention to it.
Even if the voice told him its name, he had no intention of using it.
In a battle decided in split seconds, recklessly using a power he had never used before was hardly a good idea.
Keeping his eyes locked on the enemy, Muten Natsu pressed his thumb against his sword guard, ready to strike.
The terrifyingly huge blade roared past, whipping the snowstorm into a frenzy.
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki concealed themselves within the swirling snow. With Gonryōmaru’s vision obscured, they attacked from his blind spot.
Several blades of ice flickered in and out of sight within the storm.
In the next instant, they would rain down and seal Gonryōmaru’s movements. Then Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki could...
WHOOSH!
A flaming ring swept across the battlefield.
The searing flames erupted, melting away the entire snowstorm along with every ice blade hidden within it.
Tenken violently yanked the rope.
The loop, like an enormous python, tightened around them.
Sode no Shirayuki grabbed Rukia Kuchiki by the wrist and swung her arm, hurling Rukia Kuchiki into the air. Before the loop could close completely, Sode no Shirayuki dissolved into wind and snow and vanished.
“This ends now!”
Gonryōmaru seized the opportunity and raised his wooden staff.
“Thunder!”
Several flashes of lightning converged at a single point within the dark clouds.
A bolt of purple lightning far more terrifying than anything before descended from the sky.
A deafening roar shook the surroundings.
Then an even sharper sound drowned it out.
Raindrops shattered beneath the dark clouds, turning into dense mist that stretched all the way to Rukia Kuchiki.
In that instant, Muten Natsu changed targets.
He tore through the downpour and slashed directly into the descending lightning.
The terrifying bolt crashed against the Reiatsu coating his blade.
Its concentrated power shattered apart.
The purple lightning broke into countless tiny arcs that danced around Muten Natsu’s body before fading into the air.
Muten Natsu shoved Rukia Kuchiki aside.
He spun around, gripping his Zanpakutō tightly in his right hand to meet Tenken’s enormous descending blade. The Hell Armored Gauntlet appeared over his left arm as he reached toward Gonryōmaru’s raised staff.
Cold Karmic Fire flickered across his body.
Rukia Kuchiki saw it clearly.
Again...
It was happening again.
Rukia Kuchiki reached out helplessly, trying to catch Muten Natsu’s back.
It was always like this.
She had rushed to attack earlier precisely because she didn’t want Muten Natsu using Karmic Fire after losing Bokukō.
Without Spirit Ink as fuel, Karmic Fire would mercilessly burn Muten Natsu’s own body instead.
Rukia Kuchiki would rather those flames burned her.
But...
Her empty hand suddenly seemed to brush against something.
Rukia Kuchiki instinctively grabbed it and pulled hard.
Muten Natsu’s movements immediately went crooked.
Then his entire body was violently yanked backward toward her.
BOOM!
Tenken and Gonryōmaru’s attacks missed one after another.
Both Zanpakutō looked toward Muten Natsu and Rukia Kuchiki in confusion.
The two of them looked just as bewildered.
Neither understood what had just happened.
“You won’t escape!”
Gonryōmaru pointed his wooden staff toward them, and purple lightning closed in.
There was no time to think.
Rukia Kuchiki and Muten Natsu immediately dodged in opposite directions.
The instant the distance between them widened, something connecting the two became increasingly obvious.
It was white.
Like cloud and mist, yet also like a strip of thin silk.
It extended from the wrist of the Hell Armored Gauntlet on Muten Natsu’s left arm and connected to Rukia Kuchiki’s right wrist.
As the distance between them increased, the cloud-like ribbon grew paler and paler.
Remembering what she had just felt, Rukia Kuchiki reached out to touch it.
Her hand passed straight through as though it were an illusion.
Rukia Kuchiki’s eyes shifted.
Imitating the method used to cast Kidō, she poured Reiatsu into the ribbon.
In that instant, she finally felt herself make contact with something solid.
She pulled hard.
The same thing happened again.
Muten Natsu came flying straight toward her.
Before Muten Natsu could understand what was happening, the voice that had disappeared earlier returned.
{Compass}
{Line}
{Square}
{Ink}
Each word made the gauntlet tremble.
A familiar sensation rose within Muten Natsu.
His own voice overlapped with the voice echoing inside his mind.
“Compass, Line, Square, and Ink: Heaven's Will!”
The ribbon suddenly expanded.
No longer limited to their wrists, it transformed into ethereal white clouds that enveloped both Muten Natsu and Rukia Kuchiki.
Wisps of white mist flowed around them before gradually fading from sight altogether.
Yet both Muten Natsu and Rukia Kuchiki could still faintly sense the connection between them.
As though they could reach out and touch one another at any moment.
“He’s absorbing my power through those white clouds.”
Sode no Shirayuki appeared beside Rukia Kuchiki.
Compared with Rukia Kuchiki, Sode no Shirayuki could sense changes in her own power much more clearly.
“It’s different from Myōki. Myōki received Reiryoku, but this time... he’s receiving abilities.”
Muten Natsu felt a chill unlike the cold of Karmic Fire spreading outward from within his body.
Across the places scorched by Karmic Fire, crystal-clear ice gradually spread.
It wrapped around his body like armor, taking his place as the flames burned.
The power released by Karmic Fire surged through Muten Natsu’s body.
He stepped forward and raised his Zanpakutō.
Clang!
The mountain-like blade crashed down.
Muten Natsu stopped it effortlessly with one hand.
“This feeling...”
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Gonryōmaru moving.
Before Muten Natsu could dodge, he felt a pulling force.
He relaxed and allowed himself to follow it.
Rukia Kuchiki pulled him straight toward her.
“He isn’t only absorbing power,” Sode no Shirayuki said, sensing something more. “He’s also...”
Rukia Kuchiki’s eyes lit up.
“Muten!”
“Got it!”
Muten Natsu immediately understood.
He reached out.
The ethereal cloud gathered in his palm, condensing into something like a rope.
Twisting his body, Muten Natsu swung the petite Rukia Kuchiki straight into the air.
“Tsugi no mai...”
Rukia Kuchiki raised her Zanpakutō, feeling tremendous power pouring into her body strand by strand.
“Hakuren!”
While Muten Natsu absorbed her power, she was also receiving power from him.
Rukia Kuchiki had never touched such overwhelming strength before.
She had no idea how to control it.
All she could do was release the surging power inside her all at once.
In an instant, a hazy white wall rose before Tenken and Gonryōmaru.
This was no longer merely a torrent of cold like an avalanche.
Rukia Kuchiki thrust her blade forward.
What emerged was an actual avalanche.
Countless crystalline snowflakes surged forward together, forming a white curtain that blotted out the sky.
Like clouds given weight, they swelled and churned as they rolled forward with crushing force.
Tenken’s body expanded even further.
Within moments, he grew taller than the wall of snow before him...
Then he saw another wall of snow crashing down from above amid a deep, rumbling roar.
“Damn it!”
Gonryōmaru pointed his staff toward the sky.
The churning black clouds gradually began to shine with dazzling golden light.
Terrifying power gathered within them.
And then...
The rolling avalanche rose higher layer after layer, engulfing even the clouds floating overhead and freezing them solid.
When the avalanche finally subsided, Tenken and Gonryōmaru were trapped inside an enormous mass of ice, completely unable to move.
The cold surged into the heavens.
...
“This power...”
Hyōrinmaru’s tightly furrowed brow finally relaxed slightly.
Ignoring the battered, wounded, and gasping Tōshirō Hitsugaya in front of him, Hyōrinmaru turned toward the direction of the cold he had sensed.
“This chill... There’s no mistake. That must be my master. The person capable of using my power properly is over there.”
“Stop!”
Tōshirō Hitsugaya staggered upright.
“Haven’t I already told you? I’m your master.”
“No matter how many times you say it, I won’t believe you.” Hyōrinmaru glanced at Tōshirō Hitsugaya. “I have no intention of killing you. Leave.”
“If I can’t even reclaim my own Zanpakutō...” Tōshirō Hitsugaya tightened his grip on his sword, his eyes unwavering. “Where else am I supposed to go?”
Hyōrinmaru stared into those clear, flawless emerald-green eyes.
For an instant, surprise flashed across his face.
That look...
He had seen it before...
“Hyōrinmaru.” Tōshirō Hitsugaya held his Zanpakutō in both hands. “Why... do you want to find your master?”
“I...” Hyōrinmaru opened his mouth.
That was right.
Why was he different from the other Zanpakutō?
Instead of hating his master, why did he want to find him?
“I only just realized the answer...” Tōshirō Hitsugaya looked into Hyōrinmaru’s confused eyes. “What you’re really looking for is a place where you belong... just like me.”
It had happened a long time ago.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya never seemed to grow any taller, while Grandma grew thinner and frailer with each passing day.
Then the dreams began.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya dreamed of a frozen wasteland.
Ice surrounded him everywhere.
He heard a voice.
And an echo.
It felt as though something were trying to crush him...
To completely engulf him.
A rumbling came from far away.
Like thunder.
Junrinan, 1st District of West Rukongai.
There, the only people who weren’t afraid of Tōshirō Hitsugaya were Momo Hinamori and Grandma.
Maybe it was because of his silver hair.
Maybe it was his emerald-green eyes.
Or perhaps it was his cold personality...
Everyone said he was like ice and kept their distance from him.
Grandma never said things like that.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya loved Grandma.
Wherever Grandma was, that was where he belonged.
Chapter 406: The Third Blade
“Muten?” Rukia Kuchiki noticed the grim look on Muten Natsu’s face. “What’s wrong? Did something happen somewhere else?”
“It’s Myōki.” A vein throbbed on Muten Natsu’s forehead. “Myōki and Bokukō used the other Zanpakutō as cover and found Hollowfied Sakanade and the others.”
“Captain Kurotsuchi values his research materials more than most people value their lives. The Research and Development Institute must have some way to deal with them.” Rukia Kuchiki tightened her grip on her Zanpakutō. “Focus on the enemies in front of us. Once we deal with them, we’ll head to the Research and Development Institute to help.”
Muten Natsu raised his eyes toward Tenken and Gonryōmaru.
Taking them down quickly would be anything but easy, especially now that he had lost Myōki and Bokukō.
The only thing he could rely on was...
{Me}
Muten Natsu’s eyes shifted.
A voice had sounded inside his mind.
He didn’t recognize the voice, but the sensation was familiar.
Back when he had been imprisoned in the Nest of Maggots, his Zanpakutō, Bokukō, had also been confiscated and sealed away.
It was only after losing Bokukō that he had heard Myōki calling out to him.
And now... he was hearing another voice.
“I’ll create an opening for you...” Rukia Kuchiki lowered her voice. “Focus on gathering your power. Take one of them down first, and everything afterward will be easier.”
“Wait. I think...” Muten Natsu began.
“You’ve had enough time to talk things over!” Gonryōmaru formed a seal with one hand. “I don’t mind wasting a little more time on you, but standing around doing nothing is getting rather boring.”
Click.
The shrine on Gonryōmaru’s back opened.
Dense black clouds poured out from within, rising into the sky before churning outward and spreading overhead. A dense curtain of rain began to fall.
Rukia Kuchiki immediately sensed something was wrong. “This is...”
“My true power.” Gonryōmaru raised his wooden staff. “Playtime is over.”
Twisting bolts of lightning slithered through the dark clouds like enormous serpents appearing and disappearing from sight.
Gonryōmaru pointed his raised staff forward.
Purple lightning crashed down from the heavens.
BOOM!
The ground was blasted black.
Rukia Kuchiki flickered aside as Sode no Shirayuki appeared beside her. One moved left and the other right, attacking Gonryōmaru from both sides.
“Too slow!”
Gonryōmaru swung his staff.
Five bolts of lightning descended simultaneously.
“Some no mai, Tsukishiro!”
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki called out at the same time.
Two pillars of ice instantly formed around them, sealing each of them inside and blocking the incoming lightning.
Tenken spewed flames from his mouth and swept his enormous Zanpakutō across the battlefield.
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki broke free from the ice pillars a moment beforehand, unleashing a surging wave of cold.
Amid the howling wind and snow, an ice wall appeared, slightly different from the ones they had created before.
Sode no Shirayuki wasn’t particularly skilled at manipulating ice, but that didn’t mean she was incapable of it.
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki used Tsugi no mai, Hakuren together. One released the cold while the other controlled it.
Working in tandem, they formed a sloping wall of ice like a rising wave, meeting Tenken’s blade from the side.
The enormous blade that had been heading straight toward them slid along the upper edge of the ice wall, veered off course, and swept diagonally over their heads.
Muten Natsu shifted his body slightly.
A tremendous Reiatsu suddenly erupted from him, becoming almost tangible as it crushed the ground around him and shattered bricks and stone.
Hearing the voice of another Zanpakutō was an unexpected surprise, but he had no time to communicate with it properly right now.
Rukia Kuchiki’s plan came first.
His abyssal Reiatsu began to contract.
The raindrops falling around Muten Natsu met an invisible resistance, slowing to a crawl as they descended before him.
His sheath trembled faintly.
Muten Natsu forcibly suppressed it.
Still not enough...
More...
{Wrong}
The voice sounded inside his mind again.
Muten Natsu stared fixedly at his target. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
{Name}
Why was it speaking one word at a time...?
“Then tell me your name.” Muten Natsu gradually lowered his stance. The terrifying Reiatsu was now compressed entirely around his own body. Without Myōki, he had to control all that power himself. “And you’d better hurry. I don’t have much attention to spare for you right now.”
{Then}
Muten Natsu: “...?”
Then what?!
The voice in his head fell silent again, as though it had never existed.
Muten Natsu took a deep breath and stopped paying attention to it.
Even if the voice told him its name, he had no intention of using it.
In a battle decided in split seconds, recklessly using a power he had never used before was hardly a good idea.
Keeping his eyes locked on the enemy, Muten Natsu pressed his thumb against his sword guard, ready to strike.
The terrifyingly huge blade roared past, whipping the snowstorm into a frenzy.
Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki concealed themselves within the swirling snow. With Gonryōmaru’s vision obscured, they attacked from his blind spot.
Several blades of ice flickered in and out of sight within the storm.
In the next instant, they would rain down and seal Gonryōmaru’s movements. Then Rukia Kuchiki and Sode no Shirayuki could...
WHOOSH!
A flaming ring swept across the battlefield.
The searing flames erupted, melting away the entire snowstorm along with every ice blade hidden within it.
Tenken violently yanked the rope.
The loop, like an enormous python, tightened around them.
Sode no Shirayuki grabbed Rukia Kuchiki by the wrist and swung her arm, hurling Rukia Kuchiki into the air. Before the loop could close completely, Sode no Shirayuki dissolved into wind and snow and vanished.
“This ends now!”
Gonryōmaru seized the opportunity and raised his wooden staff.
“Thunder!”
Several flashes of lightning converged at a single point within the dark clouds.
A bolt of purple lightning far more terrifying than anything before descended from the sky.
A deafening roar shook the surroundings.
Then an even sharper sound drowned it out.
Raindrops shattered beneath the dark clouds, turning into dense mist that stretched all the way to Rukia Kuchiki.
In that instant, Muten Natsu changed targets.
He tore through the downpour and slashed directly into the descending lightning.
The terrifying bolt crashed against the Reiatsu coating his blade.
Its concentrated power shattered apart.
The purple lightning broke into countless tiny arcs that danced around Muten Natsu’s body before fading into the air.
Muten Natsu shoved Rukia Kuchiki aside.
He spun around, gripping his Zanpakutō tightly in his right hand to meet Tenken’s enormous descending blade. The Hell Armored Gauntlet appeared over his left arm as he reached toward Gonryōmaru’s raised staff.
Cold Karmic Fire flickered across his body.
Rukia Kuchiki saw it clearly.
Again...
It was happening again.
Rukia Kuchiki reached out helplessly, trying to catch Muten Natsu’s back.
It was always like this.
She had rushed to attack earlier precisely because she didn’t want Muten Natsu using Karmic Fire after losing Bokukō.
Without Spirit Ink as fuel, Karmic Fire would mercilessly burn Muten Natsu’s own body instead.
Rukia Kuchiki would rather those flames burned her.
But...
Her empty hand suddenly seemed to brush against something.
Rukia Kuchiki instinctively grabbed it and pulled hard.
Muten Natsu’s movements immediately went crooked.
Then his entire body was violently yanked backward toward her.
BOOM!
Tenken and Gonryōmaru’s attacks missed one after another.
Both Zanpakutō looked toward Muten Natsu and Rukia Kuchiki in confusion.
The two of them looked just as bewildered.
Neither understood what had just happened.
“You won’t escape!”
Gonryōmaru pointed his wooden staff toward them, and purple lightning closed in.
There was no time to think.
Rukia Kuchiki and Muten Natsu immediately dodged in opposite directions.
The instant the distance between them widened, something connecting the two became increasingly obvious.
It was white.
Like cloud and mist, yet also like a strip of thin silk.
It extended from the wrist of the Hell Armored Gauntlet on Muten Natsu’s left arm and connected to Rukia Kuchiki’s right wrist.
As the distance between them increased, the cloud-like ribbon grew paler and paler.
Remembering what she had just felt, Rukia Kuchiki reached out to touch it.
Her hand passed straight through as though it were an illusion.
Rukia Kuchiki’s eyes shifted.
Imitating the method used to cast Kidō, she poured Reiatsu into the ribbon.
In that instant, she finally felt herself make contact with something solid.
She pulled hard.
The same thing happened again.
Muten Natsu came flying straight toward her.
Before Muten Natsu could understand what was happening, the voice that had disappeared earlier returned.
{Compass}
{Line}
{Square}
{Ink}
Each word made the gauntlet tremble.
A familiar sensation rose within Muten Natsu.
His own voice overlapped with the voice echoing inside his mind.
“Compass, Line, Square, and Ink: Heaven's Will!”
The ribbon suddenly expanded.
No longer limited to their wrists, it transformed into ethereal white clouds that enveloped both Muten Natsu and Rukia Kuchiki.
Wisps of white mist flowed around them before gradually fading from sight altogether.
Yet both Muten Natsu and Rukia Kuchiki could still faintly sense the connection between them.
As though they could reach out and touch one another at any moment.
“He’s absorbing my power through those white clouds.”
Sode no Shirayuki appeared beside Rukia Kuchiki.
Compared with Rukia Kuchiki, Sode no Shirayuki could sense changes in her own power much more clearly.
“It’s different from Myōki. Myōki received Reiryoku, but this time... he’s receiving abilities.”
Muten Natsu felt a chill unlike the cold of Karmic Fire spreading outward from within his body.
Across the places scorched by Karmic Fire, crystal-clear ice gradually spread.
It wrapped around his body like armor, taking his place as the flames burned.
The power released by Karmic Fire surged through Muten Natsu’s body.
He stepped forward and raised his Zanpakutō.
Clang!
The mountain-like blade crashed down.
Muten Natsu stopped it effortlessly with one hand.
“This feeling...”
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Gonryōmaru moving.
Before Muten Natsu could dodge, he felt a pulling force.
He relaxed and allowed himself to follow it.
Rukia Kuchiki pulled him straight toward her.
“He isn’t only absorbing power,” Sode no Shirayuki said, sensing something more. “He’s also...”
Rukia Kuchiki’s eyes lit up.
“Muten!”
“Got it!”
Muten Natsu immediately understood.
He reached out.
The ethereal cloud gathered in his palm, condensing into something like a rope.
Twisting his body, Muten Natsu swung the petite Rukia Kuchiki straight into the air.
“Tsugi no mai...”
Rukia Kuchiki raised her Zanpakutō, feeling tremendous power pouring into her body strand by strand.
“Hakuren!”
While Muten Natsu absorbed her power, she was also receiving power from him.
Rukia Kuchiki had never touched such overwhelming strength before.
She had no idea how to control it.
All she could do was release the surging power inside her all at once.
In an instant, a hazy white wall rose before Tenken and Gonryōmaru.
This was no longer merely a torrent of cold like an avalanche.
Rukia Kuchiki thrust her blade forward.
What emerged was an actual avalanche.
Countless crystalline snowflakes surged forward together, forming a white curtain that blotted out the sky.
Like clouds given weight, they swelled and churned as they rolled forward with crushing force.
Tenken’s body expanded even further.
Within moments, he grew taller than the wall of snow before him...
Then he saw another wall of snow crashing down from above amid a deep, rumbling roar.
“Damn it!”
Gonryōmaru pointed his staff toward the sky.
The churning black clouds gradually began to shine with dazzling golden light.
Terrifying power gathered within them.
And then...
The rolling avalanche rose higher layer after layer, engulfing even the clouds floating overhead and freezing them solid.
When the avalanche finally subsided, Tenken and Gonryōmaru were trapped inside an enormous mass of ice, completely unable to move.
The cold surged into the heavens.
...
“This power...”
Hyōrinmaru’s tightly furrowed brow finally relaxed slightly.
Ignoring the battered, wounded, and gasping Tōshirō Hitsugaya in front of him, Hyōrinmaru turned toward the direction of the cold he had sensed.
“This chill... There’s no mistake. That must be my master. The person capable of using my power properly is over there.”
“Stop!”
Tōshirō Hitsugaya staggered upright.
“Haven’t I already told you? I’m your master.”
“No matter how many times you say it, I won’t believe you.” Hyōrinmaru glanced at Tōshirō Hitsugaya. “I have no intention of killing you. Leave.”
“If I can’t even reclaim my own Zanpakutō...” Tōshirō Hitsugaya tightened his grip on his sword, his eyes unwavering. “Where else am I supposed to go?”
Hyōrinmaru stared into those clear, flawless emerald-green eyes.
For an instant, surprise flashed across his face.
That look...
He had seen it before...
“Hyōrinmaru.” Tōshirō Hitsugaya held his Zanpakutō in both hands. “Why... do you want to find your master?”
“I...” Hyōrinmaru opened his mouth.
That was right.
Why was he different from the other Zanpakutō?
Instead of hating his master, why did he want to find him?
“I only just realized the answer...” Tōshirō Hitsugaya looked into Hyōrinmaru’s confused eyes. “What you’re really looking for is a place where you belong... just like me.”
It had happened a long time ago.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya never seemed to grow any taller, while Grandma grew thinner and frailer with each passing day.
Then the dreams began.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya dreamed of a frozen wasteland.
Ice surrounded him everywhere.
He heard a voice.
And an echo.
It felt as though something were trying to crush him...
To completely engulf him.
A rumbling came from far away.
Like thunder.
Junrinan, 1st District of West Rukongai.
There, the only people who weren’t afraid of Tōshirō Hitsugaya were Momo Hinamori and Grandma.
Maybe it was because of his silver hair.
Maybe it was his emerald-green eyes.
Or perhaps it was his cold personality...
Everyone said he was like ice and kept their distance from him.
Grandma never said things like that.
Tōshirō Hitsugaya loved Grandma.
Wherever Grandma was, that was where he belonged.
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