Marching Out The ZOMBIES 4

Renewing his pledge to experiment for the Seireitei's benefit, Mayuri slips past the dead captain and sprays a clinging web from his sleeves, which Hitsugaya vaults over before raining down strikes. Every swing is turned aside by a device Mayuri fitted to his blade, one that parries anything crossing within roughly two feet at a steep angle on its own. A follow-up knee is caught on a cushion that flattens and bursts, searing Hitsugaya's leg until he sheathes it in ice.

Hitsugaya answers with his released form, Daiguren Hyorinmaru, locking the scientist's weapon in ice and running his blade clean through Mayuri's torso. An instant later, though, Mayuri stands untouched at a distance, the bankai gone, repeating his opening remark about drugs word for word. Sensing the exchange has already occurred, Hitsugaya demands answers, and Mayuri, delighted his subject can still hold a conversation, watches the captain freeze the entire scene solid, only for it to reset again.

Realizing the captain's mind is beginning to surface, Mayuri explains that his formula rewrote Hitsugaya's senses and granted him a view into the past. Each time the fight reaches the point where Mayuri dies, the captain's consciousness is thrown back to an earlier moment, so every win erases itself and the loop stays unwinnable. The drawback, he adds, is that the compound dulls short-term memory, hiding how many resets have passed, and after ten or more trips back the sense of balance seizes for thirty seconds. Hitsugaya crumples, his sword slipping free, as Mayuri muses that such paralysis could turn fatal in combat and stabs down to draw blood.

Mayuri's rigged blade and exploding cushion blunt Hitsugaya's assault, yet the captain still lands killing blows with his bankai. Those kills each trigger a reset, exposing the Postcognition Drug that loops Hitsugaya into the past. Its memory and balance side effects finally leave the captain helpless on the ground.

Part of volume sixty-six, SORRY I AM STRONG, this chapter was adapted within episode 389, Marching Out the ZOMBIES 2. The confrontation stays almost entirely between Hitsugaya and Mayuri, with no other named fighters on the page.