Kakaku Taihō

Standing far taller than the Shiba family home it looms over, the Kakaku Taihō is a slender black cannon that the clan keeps stored underground. A tan casing of similar height normally shrouds it, its muzzle bound shut, which once led Uryū Ishida to mistake the whole thing for a chimney. The weapon rises from a buried chamber reached by a passage inside the central house.

When the cannon is needed, the retainers Koganehiko and Shiroganehiko work a crank at the base of the casing, and the rumbling chamber lifts the piece upward, splitting the ground overhead and shattering the mold as a wooden platform with stone steps emerges. Riders board through a round hatch that forms when someone drives a fist into the sealed face, spiraling the material open. The Shiba know two firing styles: the elaborate Kagizaki, formally the Flower Crane Archery 2nd Style, which Kūkaku Shiba fires while Ganju Shiba steers the sphere in flight, and a plainer, unnamed launch used to send passengers straight up. Mayuri Kurotsuchi and later Kisuke Urahara pieced together a rough copy beneath the 12th Division, though it can fire only once, draws on a power source other than Kidō, and carries a rocket capsule that must be guided by hand.

The cannon belongs to the Shiba Clan and is worked chiefly by Kūkaku Shiba with her brother Ganju. During the mission to rescue Rukia Kuchiki, Kūkaku used it to blast the intruders, shielded by the Reishukaku, into the Seireitei. Roughly two years afterward she fired the Royal Guard, Ichigo among them, back up toward the Soul King Palace.