An Arcanist in Karakura Town 37 (Patreon)

An Arcanist in Karakura Town
Chapter 37

-VB-

Aizen Sosuke tapped his fingers on the arm of his bone white throne within the “throne room” of Las Noches.

It wasn’t often that he encountered stumbling blocks.

Urahara Kisuke was perhaps his greatest rival in that regard as the scapegoated former captain played the game just as well as he did. Actually, Aizen considered Urahara to be much more ruthless than he was. At the very least, Aizen did not intentionally go out of his way to encourage children to involve themselves in the wars of their parents.

… Except one of those children rebelled so thoroughly that it backfired on the shopkeeper.

Even Aizen himself found the young magician to be a fascinating boy. Sure, his perversion and lecherous behavior was to be disdained, but the boy kept it private. No, what Aizen found himself fascinated with were the boy’s inventions.

In particular, the bomb.

Initially, he thought that the bomb acted much like how quincies worked; quincy attacks disturbed the bonds between the spiritual particles, which eroded the soul and prevented it from moving to the next part of the spiritual cycle.

The bomb did not do that.

The bomb deleted the spiritual particle.

The souls that were once part of Di Roy Rinker will never exist. They no longer existed as far as the cycles of reincarnation was concerned.

The bomb was an aberration.

And Aizen could not help but think about how he could obtain it for himself and use it against his former comrades. Or more specifically, he thought about how he could use it against the Soul King.

The possibilities such a combination could cause, the usurption of the corrupted order that this entire world was founded upon…!

It tickled him.

The problem then was how to obtain the bomb… or rather the bomb maker.

The young magician had grown in bounds and leaps. He might not have been a “genius” like Aizen and Urahara were, but he was still a dangerous boy. If given one more decade to grow and refine himself, then Aizen had no doubt that the young boy, Marris Alan, would be someone he would have to look in the eyes as an equal.

But that decade was not here yet.

So how could he lure the boy to his side? He couldn’t offer safety. Whatever defenses the boy deployed after the latest assassination attempt, it was near absolute. Aizen could order all of the Espadas to fire their Gran Ray Cero upon it, and the defense would hold.

More than that, the boy was smart. He knew about Aizen, somehow, despite Aizen knowing that he did not get that information from Urahara. He implied a few things about the workings of Soul Society that also pointed to understanding the fundamental wrongness that Soul Society was founded upon.

The boy would know that he would be the subject of recruitment.

Well, the boy did have one glaring weakness.

He was, like many boys his age, a lustful teenager. Oh, he had some “trigger discipline,” but once he had a girl in his grasp, then he would not hold back.

Aizen pondered if he could take advantage of that.

Could one of his arrancars, or even a vaguely human shaped Vasto Lorde, seduce him? It was possible… but the boy’s belligerence and paranoia would not help any of Aizen’s minions in their mission. In fact, he would most likely bomb them first, talk only if they managed to survive but just barely.

It wasn’t what Aizen would do, but then again, he wasn’t a cynical, sarcastic, overdramatic, and hypocritical teenager.

He wondered if honesty would work.

… Probably not. What Aizen wanted was sure to hurt a few of the people he had soft spots for - the Kurosaki twins, the S-curve girl with odd powers, and the irrelevant athletic girl.

“Ulquiorra.”

The silent arrancar walked up to his side and waited for his order.

“See if you can’t convince the magician in Karakura Town to talk with me. Just words, mind you. We don’t need to make more enemies than we strictly need lest we get blindsided unexpectedly.”

Ulquiorra bowed and then left through a maw-ish garganta.

-VB-

Kensei hung around with the rest of the Visored as Urahara explained the situation.

Shinji was quick to point out how Urahara fucked up.

“You didn’t pay attention, did you?” the normally grinning ex-captain accused the other blonde.

Urahara pulled out his fan. “... No. I didn’t expect the 2nd Division to send assassins after him or for him to have such an adverse reaction to Yoruichi, which brings me to my next point,” he said and then snapped his fan shut. “How did he know?”

“Finally, someone asks the right fucking questions,” Kensei grunted out as everyone turned to him. “Isn’t it fucking obvious that there’s something wrong? The guy who we barely knew about just shows up one day and proceeds to grow like shit-fertilized grass. Now, he’s at a point where we can’t achieve victory against him, but he kept himself low and didn’t tell shit about his abilities until he was at a point where he could upend the goddamn world.”

“... A little exaggerated but certainly on point,” Urahara conceded. “But I am of the opinion that he is not as strong as you believe.”

“Ha? Did you not feel that fucking bomb like the rest of us?” Shinji asked with a frown.

“That’s exactly my point,” Urahara countered. “He has two things going for him: his impenetrable defense and the spirit-deletion bomb. If he steps out of his bunker, then he can’t win. That’s why he hasn’t left his warehouse in weeks.”

Kensei tsked. Another lab rat like Aizen and Urahra, huh?

“But try not to fight his servant. That one … he can crush you all.”

He paused and grinned. “How?”

“He is someone quite like us, actually, though he may be older than us all. Actually, he may be as old as Yamamoto. It wasn’t hard to deduce who Marris’s servant, Hidemasa, was.”

“Who is he?” Rose asked as he leaned forward.

Urahara smirked. “The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.”

“... Is that important?” Kensei interrupted. “That doesn’t explain how the magician knows about Soul Society aside from what little tidbits you and the Kurosaki boya drops.”

Urahara lost his smirk and hummed. “It is also something I am looking into, especially since he looked like he was aware of our conflict’s eventual outbreak of violence even before we did. It’s also why I brought up his servant. Qin Shi Huang was known for burning books, you know?”

“Yeah, so?” Shinji asked.

“But what if the magician servant can do something? Books are methods of information exchange, but what if he has an ability to burn away how that information was exchanged and thus prevent anyone from discovering how he learned about something?”

“That’s ridi-”

“Aizen’s shikai only needs a look for us all to fall under its illusion,” Hiyori grumbled from the side.

It was a somber realization that, perhaps, they knew less about a soul’s capability than they thought.