The moon hung bright, stars scattered thin around it, moonlight mingling with starlight as it spilled across the cliffs above Koifushi Mountain, District 3 of the Rukongai.
It draped the figure standing at the cliff’s edge in a hazy halo of silver-white.
The man’s gaze was fixed on the inky little river out past Junrinan, on Moriyasu Tokoyo.
“Captain Aizen, you’re really that interested in that kid?” A voice, its pitch rising and falling in a strange lilt, drifted up from behind him, a tone that would have struck anyone as mocking.
But Aizen didn’t seem to mind at all.
He answered gently, “You know, Gin?
That boy’s talent might just outstrip yours.” “Oh?
For an underclassman to earn praise that high from Captain Aizen, he really must be something.” A man with hair the color of white silver, eyes narrowed to slits, the corners of his mouth turned up in a permanent curl, wearing a captain’s haori, came to a stop half a step behind Aizen.
He too faced out toward the edge of Junrinan.
“But surely raw talent alone wouldn’t be enough to catch your interest like this, Captain Aizen?” The man himself was Gin Ichimaru, Captain of the Gotei 13’s Third Division, and the holder of the fastest graduation record in Shin’ō Academy’s entire history, a genius among geniuses.
Getting himself taken on as one of Aizen’s subordinates in the first place had taken quite a bit of effort on his part.
Aizen tilted his head up toward the bright moon and answered quietly.
“Moriyasu Tokoyo wears an unusual glove on his right hand.
It looks old, ancient even.
And the pattern on it appears to be the crest of some noble clan.” “A noble crest?
Don’t tell me this junior of ours belongs to some great clan?” Gin sounded genuinely surprised.
What surprised him was that Aizen would take this much interest in a noble at all.
Could the boy be the descendant of some reclusive clan?
Aizen reached up and adjusted his glasses, the lenses catching a glint of moonlight.
“It’s precisely because I don’t know which clan that crest belongs to that I find it interesting.” Understanding dawned on Gin, and he nodded.
“Ah, I see.
Should I take a trip to the Great Library of Souls, then, Captain Aizen?
That place has every scrap of information there is on Soul Society.” “I’ve already been, Gin.
That’s exactly how I came to the conclusion that no one knows where he came from.
And here’s the strangest part, do you know what it is?” Aizen’s voice stayed just as gentle and even as always, but there was a faint thread of eager curiosity woven through it.
That was enough to make Gin’s narrowed eyes nearly snap open.
In all his years following Aizen, the only times he’d ever seen the man’s composure so much as flicker had been during the rare moments some experiment finally paid off.
The rest of the time, Aizen’s emotions stayed steady, impossible to read.
But now, here he was, letting a hint of genuine excitement show over some noble brat.
That was a first.
He mulled it over for a long while, came up empty, and finally just grinned and said, “I don’t know, Captain Aizen.” Aizen turned his gaze back out toward the edge of Junrinan.
“The Great Library of Souls is said to record everything in Soul Society.
Even the egg a bird lays in some forest, even the eggs a fish drops in a river, it records all of it.
But when I went and searched through it earlier, I found nothing.
Not a single record concerning Moriyasu Tokoyo.” “What?” The word slipped out of Gin before he could stop it.
He’d been to the Great Library of Souls himself before, and he knew just how exhaustively thorough its records were.
Anything that had definitively happened in Soul Society got recorded there, without exception, whether it concerned a person or a thing.
And yet this Moriyasu Tokoyo had appeared in Soul Society, enrolled at Shin’ō Academy, and left behind not a single trace in the records.
That fact alone said everything about how far from ordinary he was.
Only now did Gin understand why Captain Aizen had taken such an interest in the kid.
He thought it over, then asked, “Should I go make contact with him, then?” Aizen turned, casually tore at the air in front of him, and the space itself peeled back like a sheer curtain being brushed aside.
He answered gently, “No need, Gin.
Moriyasu Tokoyo is nothing more than a minor curiosity.
We should stay focused on our own business for now.” With that, he stepped through the torn space.
Gin followed after him, that same grin fixed on his face.
In no time at all, the two of them arrived in the living world.
The space Aizen had casually torn open, it turned out, had been a passage between worlds.
He’d opened it with striking ease, crossing straight from Soul Society into the living world.
The place they now stood was a spiritually potent hotspot in the living world, Karakura Town.
Once there, Aizen idly raised a finger toward the sky and drew a line straight down through the air.
A black fissure appeared once more.
But unlike before, this time things came crawling out of it, strangely shaped bodies with white masks over their faces.
These were Hollows, the twisted remnants of human souls that had fallen after death.
The Hollows let out hollow, bone-chilling wails as they emerged.
Ignoring Aizen and Gin standing right beside the fissure, they scattered off in every direction, ready to hunt down souls and living humans alike.
Suddenly, a blue arrow of pure Reishi shot out from the darkness of the street, striking one of the Hollows just as it was about to scatter and blasting it into dust.
A young man with faintly white hair and glasses stepped out onto the street.
He looked to be somewhere in his twenties or thirties, and the moment he appeared, every Hollow that had been about to scatter turned toward him instead.
The Hollows roared and charged at him, claws and fangs bared.
The young man, dressed in a white uniform, thrust his left hand up toward the sky, then snapped it shut in a fist, and a longbow woven of pure Reishi flashed into being in his palm.
He then hooked two fingers of his right hand around the Reishi bowstring and drew it back, a pale blue Reishi arrow taking shape.
He aimed at the charging Hollows and released.
The arrow whistled through the air, punching straight through and killing them instantly.
But there were quite a few Hollows this time, and by the time he’d taken down a few, others had already closed the distance.
In the next instant, his body vanished from where he’d stood and reappeared behind the approaching Hollow, drawing and firing again to finish it off.
Aizen and Gin watched it all in silence.
“Oh my, this Quincy’s not bad at all.” Gin said with a grin.
“Though as fuel, I’d say he still comes up a bit short.” Aizen kept his gaze fixed on the young Quincy the entire time.
“Indeed.
His power’s simply too weak.” Gin chimed in.
“So we’re giving up on him, then?
A power this small won’t hold a candle to what those half-finished specimens can offer.” Aizen watched calmly as the young Quincy struggled through killing the last Hollow, then dropped straight to his knees, gasping for breath.
“Quincy power at this level, if worked into the specimen, would just get swallowed up instantly.
It wouldn’t produce anything worth watching.” He shook his head, faintly disappointed.
“Seems the Shinigami came down too hard on the Quincy last time.
Come on, let’s head back.” “Of course, Captain Aizen.” Gin, still grinning, followed Aizen back through the rift in space.
Before he left, he tilted his head slightly to glance once more at the young Quincy kneeling in the street, as if trying to fix the man’s face in his memory.
Then his silhouette vanished into the rift.
The man below had no idea that two Shinigami had been watching his entire fight from start to finish.
“So many Hollows today.
I’m beat.” Sōken Ishida murmured under his breath, got to his feet, and headed home.