#senkaimon

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@senkaimon​​ ( Unohana ) said: “Do you hate me so?”

Did her ears deceive her, or did she hear the hint of a ghost in the demure tones of the Fourth Division’s captain? She paused, sparing a side-along glance over her shoulder. Surely not; surely whatever remained of her dear, old friend was long since buried beneath that insufferable mask of benevolence. Hardly anyone remembered her true nature anymore. Those that did turned their eyes to the ground, politely accepting the farce for what it was. Ah, but not her. Not the Ōorigami. Shutara met the cloudy blue of her eyes and saw the distant storms brewing within – welcomed them, in fact. 

“Don’t flatter yourself, my dear,” she said, closing the distance between them with slow, languid steps. A pair of hands stretched to meet her, smoothing delicately over the stray hairs of her braid. Such peculiar placement, that…not that it did anything to hide the truth. She lifted the neat bunch of raven strands, giving the faintest of tugs as she leaned forward. 

“I hardly think of you at all.”

With that, she allowed the braid to slip from her fingers like an inky black stream. It fell to land against her chest, flush against the scar they both knew resided below. She could hide the mangled bit of flesh if she really wanted to, maybe even forget it with time. But she’d never be rid of it. And Shutara decided long ago she’d have all of her, or none at all. 

send me a topic to write a meta about my muse on

ohoho thank you this is genuinely one of my favorite underrated lines of his.

it was neither sarcasm nor surprise, in truthfulness; aizen was disappointed. we've seen how strong the espada are, all of them; kubo made a point of displaying that to us time and time again. aaroniero i could understand being taken down the way he was because he decided to toy with his food instead of just eating her ( don't you make a joke on my post, peaches ) and zommari had the unfortunate luck of having to deal with byakuya. still, if mayuri had not shown up when he had, then szayel would have easily killed renji and ishida but kubo’s a coward who won’t kill heroes.

yet we saw how much trouble kenpachi had with nnoitra and grimmjow and ichigo beat the shit out of each other and when it came to the tenkai kechuu, the other captains struggled visibly against starrk, barragan, and hallibel. if the vaizard had not shown up when they did, i am extremely positive that we would’ve seen toshiro, shunsui ( and ukitake ) as well as soifon taken out of the fighting for good. that didn’t happen, of course, but the way the fights were going? yeah, the captains were not going to win. or if they did, it would’ve been very chancy. we saw how much power they were putting into trying to stop the espada, both in the fake karakura town and in hueco mundo ( though mayuri did that with szayel and i mean szayel brought it on himself because he didn’t do the tactical thing of retreating and observing. ) and i think that says a lot about them.

hell, ulquiorra KILLED ICHIGO before their fight was over.

so i mean ... when aizen says that the combined power of the espada is lesser than his own, he is not exaggerating.

it’s fairly obvious that there is a significant power gap between aizen and the espada which makes one wonder - just how strong is aizen, exactly? he takes hallibel out without any issue when toshiro, hiyori, and lisa were putting in so much effort to beat her with only two hits from his blade. he stops komamura’s bankai with his bare hand ( he does i’ve checked and that’s the second time he stops a bankai bare-handed ) and then just goes on to plow his way through the captains and vaizard without any effort on his behalf whatsoever.

so it was not sarcasm and it was not surprise; he was genuinely disappointed because he had had more faith in them than that and yet the espada ... failed. he put in time and effort of assembling them and the ones we see are, in my opinion, the third iteration of the espada ( which is vaguely supported by canon ) which means that aizen has had plenty of time to work on refining them for yeas now, hunting them down and making them his blades.

i think he expected they would have been able to do more. but not a single of his espada managed to do more than hurt the captains; some more, some less. kenpachi himself said that if he didn’t start taking things seriously, he was going to die in his fight with nnoitra. so the espada are certainly a threat! and if the vaizard had not shown up when they had, i do entirely believe that we would’ve seen dead captains on the battlefront. it’s just so telling though that as soon as aizen decided to step onto the battlefield himself ( and sometimes i wonder just how much shinji showing up when he did inspired him to suddenly change things up because i do believe aizen would’ve been content to still sit back and watch, no matter the sudden arrival of wonderweiss and fura at that point in time. ) that attacking him saw everyone failing at taking him down.

honestly, the only two people there that day who were of any significant threat to aizen were gin and yamamoto and aizen very meticulously planned things out where yamamoto was concerned. he would not have expected any of his espada to take him out, thus wonderweiss, but it’s still so telling that aizen took out not only all of the official captains who were there that day but the vaizard ( who we know are stronger than regular shinigami ) in no time at all.

so yeah, that line of his? pure and utter disappointment because he thought that the espada would have done more. i think he was anticipating they would hurt the captains more, perhaps even kill one or two of them. it didn’t bother him at all to face everyone when he did, or how he did, of course; even if everyone had been at full strength, he had already seen their tactics, their power, and more. they wouldn’t have ever been able to touch him. he was disappointed because it was proof, in his eyes, that even they weren’t as good as he thought they were. hell, he didn’t even kill hallibel despite his disappointment; he simply ... discarded her.