The Bestial

Tōsen completes his shift into an insectlike Hollow and opens great bulging eyes, crowing that he can finally see, and that he sees Komamura before him. Laughing near madly, he drinks in the sky, Hisagi's spilled blood, and the whole world, telling Komamura he is even uglier than imagined. As they clash, Komamura recalls Tōsen once explaining why he became a Shinigami: his friend loved the world and fought for justice, and after her death he swore to carry her wish forward. Komamura remembers sensing a lie back then, that Tōsen never claimed to love the world himself, yet he respected that Tōsen refused to feign sainthood and pledged to be a true friend who might one day rekindle that love.

Komamura attacks, but the Hollowfied Tōsen catches the massive blade barehanded and retaliates with Los Nueve Aspectos, nine sonic waves that punch a hole through Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō and, in turn, wound Komamura, who falls in a spray of blood. As Tōsen closes in to finish him, declaring that justice cannot be voiced in mere words, Komamura apologizes to Iba, to Hisagi, and to Tōsen himself for failing. To the shock of both, Hisagi then drives his sealed Zanpakutō through Tōsen's skull, reasoning that the old, sightless Tōsen would have dodged so simple a strike with ease. Bowing his head, he releases the blade inside Tōsen's head and kills his former master. As life leaves him, Tōsen glimpses his dead friend's face but no longer knows it, murmuring that this was never how things were meant to be before darkness takes him.

Tōsen's bug-form Hollow gains sight and cripples Komamura's Bankai with Los Nueve Aspectos, and Komamura, recalling their old friendship, resigns himself to defeat. Hisagi ends it by ramming his sealed sword through Tōsen's head and releasing it, killing his former captain, who dies unable to recognize the friend whose death set him on his path.

The ninth and final chapter of volume 44, VICE IT, it appeared in Weekly Shōnen Jump as The Bestial before being retitled Bells Are Blue for the collected edition. Its events were adapted across episodes 290 and 291, spanning Tōsen's fall and the start of Shinji's clash with Aizen.