The Thin Ice

Standing where his family estate once rose, Marechiyo reels at the alien city and his captain's absence. His little sister Mareyo clings to him, begging him not to go, yet he kneels and swears he must fight to shield her, their kin, and all of Soul Society. Their moment breaks when BG9 crashes down nearby, the very enemy who stole Sui-Feng's Bankai.

Elsewhere, Bazz-B recognizes Hitsugaya as the ice captain robbed by Cang Du, and the two agree they are well matched before fire and frost detonate across the district. When the blast shears through the ice sheltering the rank and file, one soldier lifts a shard and marvels at how flimsy it is. Bazz-B mocks the fragile walls, but Rangiku joins the fray, scattering Haineko's ash for what she dubs Operation Mille-feuille over Hitsugaya's protest that he never named it.

Bazz-B's next inferno leaves the barrier untouched. Hitsugaya explains the trick: Rangiku spreads her ash into thin layers, he glazes each in a wafer of ice, then pulls it back to trap a vacuum that heat cannot cross. Because Hyorinmaru's Shikai and Bankai differ less in power than any other captain-class blade, he had trained to win with a fraction of his usual ice. Shrugging off a heavy fireball, he splits the walls apart, levels his sword, and drives a hollowed spear of ice, Shinku no Kori no Yaiba, through the Sternritter's right shoulder.

BG9 corners Marechiyo and his frightened sister Mareyo. Hitsugaya and Rangiku raise a layered vacuum-ice wall, Shinku Taso Hyoheki, that blocks Bazz-B's flames. Hitsugaya wounds Bazz-B's shoulder with Shinku no Kori no Yaiba, proving the pair can fight without a Bankai.

The Thin Ice is the eighth chapter of the sixty-first volume, THE LAST 9DAYS, in the Thousand-Year Blood War. It was adapted within Episode 381, Peace from Shadows.