Soifon had close enough AP and speed to keep up with Yoruichi, and her hax would still work on a Yoruichi-level opponent, who clearly had a statement for Reiatsu being on Byakuya's level, who is relative to Ichigo.
one, no she doesn't have statements about her spiritual pressure being on the level of byakuya the only thing she has on him is the speed advantage which is brought up in their first meeting (in few hundred years) in soul socity in chapter 117 when she seals his sword before he can unleash his shikai while he was focusing on ichigo and in 118 where they where compering their shun-po a technique specifically focused on speed of movement with both showing themselves to be comperable to one another with yoruichi being the better user of the technique in the end
this is the one comperison between yoruichi and base byakuya we get in the arc... well other then this:
"you had no chance, no one there could've fought byakuya and lived"
considering that after their little shun-po exchange yoruichi was out of breath that includes her as well, she is not on his level in terms of attack power, defenses or spirit pressure, the only thing she has on him is speed and then not by much.
Byakuya literally got blitzed by an out-of-shape Yoruichi. She trained for around three days and geared up before fighting Soifon. There is nowhere it states she was weaker to the point that Ichigo would negate her hax and speed. Her AP is listed as 80/100 while Byakuya's AP was 90/100, so the gap is not that big. Her hax would still have worked on Ichigo with the amount of Reiatsu he had at that time. Not to mention, you ignored that she would still have hindered him due to her speed. Or she could have waited for their fight to be over and killed Ichigo. It's not like he was healthy after fighting Byakuya.
and you ignore the fact that base byakuya has the speed stat of 90, while Sui-Feng has a speed stat of 100, ichigo post bankai training was able to flat out blitz byakuya with him having to go into bankai himself to keep up
and speaking of stats
sui-feng
byakuya
she literally loses out to him on all stats other than speed/mobility where she has a 10 point lead and stamina where she has a 30 point lead.
Byakuya literally shatters her on everything else, attack power, spiritual pressure and kido mastery, defense and intellegence
and all of this is base byakuya not even his shikai or bankai which make him both far stronger and far faster (5-10 time that is) and even after all those buffs ichigo was leagues faster then him so no even after being wounded sui-feng is not keeping up with bankai ichigo (not to mention the fact that he will more than likely use the hollow mask and completely oblitirate her in no time at all).
They couldn't; they wouldn't. The only thing they needed was to get rid of Megumi, and for that, they still needed to deal with the Culling Game players. If they entered the colony, they would have been thrown to random places, so there was a 50/50 chance of them even meeting Megumi. Not to mention, Takaba was with Megumi; with his hax, he would have survived nonetheless, and the explosion guy would have killed most of them for the points.
cept maki killed them all before the culling games began and they where planning to go in and kill all 3 of them at about the same time that they where dealing with hakari (maki finishes the zenin clean up in chapter 152 the cast enters the culling games in 161) and even if we say the zenin clan wouldn't send out the hei and kukuru after megumi straight away there is the whole clan going through the 1 out of 9 barriers and there is again a high likely hood that the zenin clan would wait out a perfect opportunity to strike as half of them are assasins and megumi even with takaba there for help isn't immune to being split up, much like in his fight with reggie star where takaba took on Hazenoki while megumi 1v1'd reggie and in this case we will have the kukuru distracting takaba while the hei (5 semi grade 1 to grade 1 sorcers and naoya on top) would take on megumi leading to his death no matter how you slice it.
Also, the Zenin clan was filled with fodders. I can bet Megumi would have cooked everyone except Naoya. As I mentioned above, it's not like they would have come all together.
it ain't filled with fodder my man, maki is just special grade level something that megumi is just not, we are talking mutliple dozen kukuru aka grade 2 sorcers without CT's and the hei 5 grade 1s and naoya at the helm because if we start labeling grade 1 as fodder then guess what so is yuji and megumi at this point, because it ain't like now where yuji is a clear special grade and megumi is taken over by sukuna, this is the point in the story where both of them where going into full death matches with grade 1 opponents and winning by their skin of their teeth, coming up against multiple grade 1s and dozens of grade 2s at their back means certain death for them at this point.
Ok? I don't see the importance of this for Maki.
.... maki took him out, that massive issue that was naoya gone, poof reduced to nothing, it is pretty massive for her narrative importance.
Same as above them meeting Megumi was 50/50 chances and Culling game players would have killed.most of them
the only culling game players that could kill were mostly in one single colony and they were preocupied with yuta at the time and the only other player that could reliably take out literally 40+ grade 2s, 5 grade 1s and naoya on top, is kashimo and he would be fighting hakari at that point even if we say that only 1/4th of them would be in megumi's colony, that is certain death for him,
Even before that, they literally had no impact. Also, for the same reasons as above, they didn't have any chances to jump Megumi. Also, killing Megumi barely had any impact either, as Sukuna might have chosen someone else as a vessel. It's rare, but who cares? It's not like he is out of options.
and you think that would not have an impact? no mahoraga, no world slash, no world slash= the fight with gojo going on for longer weakening sukuna further and making him lose pretty much instantly the moment kashimo comes in as we'd have sukuna at less than 30% by that point with no world slash to one tap kashimo, megumi dying makes sukuna drastically weaker which in turn makes the current story conlusions just not the same in the slightest because at this point sukuna would be dead to yuji and higaruma after he loses even more output and strength wasting CE on kashimo.
He could have waited for another hundred or thousand years.
yeah and that would have exactly 0 impact on the story right?
Same as above they didn't had any openings on Megumi. Even if Gojo was sealed.
they did, planty of them in fact as mentioned above.
The zenin where a massive threat to our protag and dutorag and maki ripped them all apart single handedly taking multiple potential threats off the board.
and again I am saying that both Yoruichi and Maki have a similar level of importance with maki
debatably havin more of a narrative impact.