The Shooting Star Project

The Kakaku Taiho rises from a collapsing smokestack as Kukaku presents her personal launch platform. She tosses Ichigo a Reishukaku and explains it can be charged with Reiryoku through the palm, much like casting Kido, but Ichigo, a makeshift Shinigami, cannot grasp the concept. Ganju demonstrates by forming a spherical barrier, the cannonball, and Kukaku details the defenses of the Seireitei: its wall is Sekkiseki, a stone that nullifies spirit energy, and it radiates a dome called the Shakonmaku that would disintegrate any soul flying into it.

The Reishukaku barrier is what lets a cannonball pierce that dome, so Kukaku sends the group to train, warning that losing focus while channeling energy causes an explosion. As Ganju is dispatched to help them practice, he hesitates and asks what he should tell their older brother Kaien about aiding a Shinigami; Kukaku coldly orders him never to raise the subject and to hide his grief. Meanwhile in the Seireitei, the lieutenants of the Gotei 13 are ordered to don their badges and assemble while the captains manage the mounting crisis.

Kukaku explains the Kakaku Taiho, the Reishukaku, and the Sekkiseki-based Shakonmaku that guards the Seireitei, and the group begins barrier training with Ichigo lagging behind. A tense exchange hints at the death of the Shiba siblings' brother Kaien, and the Gotei 13's lieutenants gather.

The chapter opens volume ten, TATTOO ON THE SKY, in the Soul Society arc. It lays out the mechanics of the group's infiltration and first names Kaien Shiba, seeding a mystery central to the Shiba family. The launch device and the Shakonmaku barrier are introduced here.