Testament, Your Heart is Right Here...

Aaroniero Arruruerie presses forward in his Resurrección while wielding Kaien Shiba's trident, and Rukia Kuchiki throws herself at him even as she silently begs Kaien's forgiveness for the night she took his life. A thrust snaps her Shikai in two and runs her through, leaving her dangling in the Arrancar's grip as consciousness slips away and old memories surface.

She returns in her mind to Mount Koifushi, where Kaien first trained her. He was the earliest member of the Thirteenth Division to treat her as an equal, and his easy encouragement steadied her through her doubts about her middling skills and her failure to earn a seated rank. Pressed about where the heart lies, Kaien holds up his fist and argues that a heart is not housed in the body but forged in the bonds between people who care for one another.

Kaien's teaching turns on a single idea: because a soul dissolves into the reishi of Soul Society when it dies, what remains is the heart it entrusts to friends, which is why he warns Rukia never to fight or die alone. She recalls him leaving his own heart with her in his final moments, and the memory revives her. Gripping the frozen trident, she raises her broken Sode no Shirayuki and performs San no mai, Shirafune, extending an ice blade that pierces Aaroniero's true head and the capsule within.

She tells him he only ever possessed a spiritual shell, since Kaien's heart stays with her, and shatters the capsule. Glotonería collapses into a flood of fluid, both of Aaroniero's heads perish, and a gravely wounded Rukia crawls free with fragments still lodged in her body. Thinking of Orihime and the loneliness of captivity, she vows to reach her before finally collapsing.

The episode adapts material from chapters 267 through 269 and concludes the duel with Aaroniero. The anime widens the flashbacks considerably, adding Rukia's first meeting with Kaien, her academy struggles with swordsmanship, and Kaien's death in her arms just before the finish. Censorship softens the impalement so no blood is drawn, and the sequence of Rukia's recollections is reordered from the manga. The picture-book segment has the Shinigami Women's Association, broke for the quarter, scheming to raise funds by selling paparazzi photos of famous Gotei 13 members.