Chapter 151: What Kind of Blame Session Is This?
Seireitei. Inside the Gotei 13.
Sasakibe Chojiro's brow was drawn tight as he moved quickly down the corridor of Squad 1.
He had been doing his best to keep his emotions under control, but the situation was complicated enough that keeping a neutral expression was proving more difficult than usual.
Damn.
How did things get to this point?
Anxiety, frustration, a heaviness that had no clean name. The thoughts kept pressing upward, and Sasakibe, who prided himself on composure and bearing, was showing something close to open strain on his face.
This was not an exaggeration.
Soul Society was facing a genuine, once-in-a-century upheaval.
Every person inside it was caught up in it, and ignoring what was coming was not an option. Sasakibe reached the door, stopped, steadied his breathing, brought himself back to something workable, and raised his hand.
Three measured knocks.
"Come in."
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni's voice reached him from beyond the door, and something in Sasakibe's chest settled slightly.
It was going to be alright.
As long as the Captain-Commander was here, it would be.
The old man's presence was, in itself, something that couldn't be moved. He simply existed, stood in the room, and that was enough. A monument worn by centuries of wind and frost, deep and formidable in a way that was impossible to fully describe.
"Excuse me."
Sasakibe pushed the door open.
He stopped just inside the entrance, drew a slow breath, and opened his eyes.
"..."
His gaze swept across the room and the assembled captains.
No visible reaction. No obvious expression. And yet, in the next moment, his brow gave an involuntary, almost imperceptible twitch.
He had braced himself for this. He had known what to expect. And still, actually seeing it made it impossible not to exhale quietly.
The captain's meeting room, ordinarily full to capacity, had roughly a third of its positions simply empty.
Not reassigned. Not temporarily absent. Just: gone.
The captains who remained had a range of expressions. Some were visibly grim. Some had gone pale. Others sat with their eyes closed, giving nothing away.
Different people. Different reactions. That was simply how it was.
Sasakibe pressed his lips together. He kept his own reaction inward.
"Chojiro."
Yamamoto spoke his given name from the head of the room, voice low. Sasakibe refocused, tilted his head forward in a gesture that communicated everything a subordinate owed to a superior.
"Present, Captain-Commander."
"State the nature and sequence of this incident."
"Understood..."
Nearly a week had passed since the crisis that had shaken all of Seireitei.
After a full round of assessments and documentation, the process had finally reached its conclusion. This gathering existed to draw a formal line under the whole affair.
Sasakibe Chojiro bowed deeply, then produced the prepared report from inside his uniform.
He began reading aloud.
"As verified and confirmed: Former Squad 3 Captain Otoribashi Rojuro, Squad 5 Captain..."
The names followed in succession. At the end of it, the judgment assigned to all of them was a single, almost weightless word.
Rebellion.
That was the ruling.
But there would always be people who could not leave it uncontested. That was, after all, what the captains' assembly was for.
"I have a question."
Squad 13 Captain Ukitake Jushiro raised his right hand and covered his mouth, speaking through a cough.
"We haven't seen any of them since that day, have we? There has been no communication of any kind, not even a single exchange of words, and yet here we are passing judgment. Does that actually sit right with anyone?"
No one answered.
Silence was the only constant.
Then, after a short pause, the person beside him was the first to respond.
Squad 8 Captain Kyoraku Shunsui turned a hand slowly through his hair and spoke in a measured tone.
"Honestly... there isn't much to be done about it. The decision isn't really ours to make. The Central 46 has already issued its ruling, and at this point we can't exactly..."
"What I'm asking is whether we actually need to take their judgment at face value."
Ukitake's gaze narrowed. His voice carried a deliberate weight.
"These are people who have never been involved in our work, not once. And on the basis of their own view alone, they've moved against our..."
THUD.
A single dull sound.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni, seated at the head of the room, expression completely still and unreadable, brought his staff down once against the floor.
As a call to order, that single movement said more than any number of words.
Silence.
Then.
"Ukitake. Remember your position."
A captain of the Gotei 13, before expressing personal preferences, needed to be clear on their duties and responsibilities.
There was no ambiguity in what Yamamoto was communicating. The behavior had fallen below what was appropriate.
"..."
Ukitake Jushiro closed his eyes slowly.
"Captain-Commander. I let my concerns get the better of me."
"Then let us return to the matter at hand."
No deviations. Under the Captain-Commander's control, the topic was pulled back to where it needed to be.
And as the room resettled, Unohana Retsu, who had been sitting in silence, spoke.
"I recognize this may be poorly timed, but I also find this situation deeply unusual."
She looked across at the others around her, choosing her words carefully.
"From the initial incident, to the detention, the sentencing, and ultimately Yoruichi Shihoin's decision to take everyone and flee... the total elapsed time was less than half a day."
Plain statement.
"That is not enough time. There was not enough information to work from. We never spoke with any of the people involved. Their own accounts were never taken into consideration."
Something about the whole process felt wrong from the inside out. But at the same moment, a different voice entered the room.
"According to the contents of the report, when Otoribashi Rojuro and the others were discovered, signs consistent with Hollowfication were already present. Per the Central 46's testimony, prior to ruling out potential contagion, the decision was made to prioritize neutralizing the threat."
In one sense, the reasoning itself wasn't without merit.
Preventing a problem before it spread was, after all, one of the Gotei 13's standing obligations.
In that delicate standoff, Yamamoto suddenly opened his eyes and swept his gaze across the room.
"Matsushita Yusuke."
From a corner of the room, a pale-faced captain answered.
He coughed twice, and hauled himself upright with some unsteadiness. His uniform was intact, but through the gaps in the fabric, the outline of bandaging was faintly visible. Faint traces of blood had seeped through, giving the whole impression a subtly fragile quality.
Matsushita Yusuke pressed his lips together, coughed twice more, gave a small nod, and spoke quietly.
"Present... Captain-Commander."
***
where's bro's Oscar? hahahaha