Vexed VIxan [training, solo]

It was just after dawn when the silver-haired Shinigami was in the training grounds, staring down a practice dummy with the intent of a dog watching his owner's sausage sandwich, eagerly waiting for that moment when it slipped from the bun and fell to the floor. It was so early to make sure that nobody was around, so she could get some peace and quiet in her training. Not ensuring that nobody would come, even at this early hour, but it was still something she decided would be better than in the middle of the day when anyone could come in and jostle her about for whatever reason they believed was right.

Intent stares were all that happened in the courtyard for several seconds, and then she snapped out a palm-strike, something about the attack making it look specifically thrown, much different to any normal attack. One with great intent, and purpose beyond just hitting it. However, like the dog's realization that the sausage he had so carefully observed, and so swiftly snatched up from the floor was naught but a vegan-designed substitute, Mirja's palm strike hit the dummy, and snapped it's stand, sending it crashing to the wall nearby. Clearly, from her exasperated sigh, this was not something she wanted to happen.

"Three hundred years of fighting, you'd think I'd have gotten somewhere near mastery, but no. Have to keep being a little, dam, bugger. Don't you, mister Hakuda?" She asked rhetorically, before replying in a mocking tone "Yes Mirja, I do have to keep being a little bugger. Your cries of despair and anguish are the only source of entertainment that I get in my life. How else would I keep going after being used to hit things for my entire life?"

Delusional two-way conversations aside, Mirja moved to the next nearest target, and prepared herself for a second attempt, focusing and breathing deep, in and out. Before she could strike, however, her head was flooded with sudden, unbidden emotion and what looked to be memories. Irritation, determination, and no shortage of pain, it looked like a young girl practicing her poor, crude fighting techniques in the backyard of a small house. And then going to employ these techniques on a few brats and bullies around the neighborhood. Words floated in her head, abstract and removed from context, but definitely not English. It sounded a lot more like Norwegian. Words she couldn't picture, but instinctively understood. There was also a bunch of fights, some where pain was in copious amounts, and the girl clearly lost the fight soundly, and others where she had destroyed her enemies and seen them at her feet, groaning in pain. And also one or two where there was no real victor and both her and the person she was fighting skulked off to lick their wounds. Or because it was lunch time and nobody crossed Mum and got away with it.

Then, just as suddenly as these ghostly whispered appeared, the vanished, leaving Mirja sweating softly, and staring at a dummy like she had just seen a ghost. By the gods she hated these ghostly memories. Simply appearing when they willed, throwing emotion and memory at her like it was something great, something she actually wanted in life. And then vanished with no explanation, nor warning for when they would next come about. It honestly scared her immensely. Not knowing exactly what she'd next be feeling, or when she would be feeling it. Just dumped on her mental desk like a large bag of pennies she had to sort through to make sure the exact change was there. This time, wasn't to difficult. Some young girl wanted to be a fighter, and was inspired by the nature of legends and myths she had heard from some sort that wasn't entirely clear. With no teacher or actual guide to go off, her style was crass, lacking in refinement and practicality, and she learned this quickly on the fighting ground.

But getting battered by the bullies and being left a mess did not deter her. She was smart, gifted even. She took what she had done wrong, and changed it so that next time she met these vagabonds, it was done right and they were the ones on the floor bleeding and crying in pain. And then she moved on, to another foe. Stumped, evolve, adapt, succeed. Mirja could learn from this sudden girl in her head. If there was an obstacle that was in her way, she needed to get around it, or over it. And if it was to wide, and to tall to get around, or over, then there was only one last option available to her.

She had to go through it.

The palm strike snapped out, hit the dummy, and it followed the fate of the first, snapping and smashing into the wall in a cloud of straw and wood. She wasn't going to be beaten by this mental idea that had come to her at half four in the morning however, and so calmly moved to the next straw dummy, and positioned her palm dead center to it's chest. Taking a measured breath, she felt her internal Reiatsu cycling, but never leaving her body, and found a secure sort of peace there.

Again she struck, and again, she was met with failure. To any outside observer that happened to come along, it would be entirely unclear what she was trying to accomplish by breaking all of the dummies in the training ground, but Mirja knew her goal, and that was all that mattered.
"Are you sure what you are trying to do is even possible, physically?" came the mental voice of Beowulf, her Zanpaktou. Deciding to take a break from the palm strikes to go visit him, she sat, drew the Zanpaktou to her lap, and closed her eyes.

Getting to Beowulf's Inner World was much easier than it used to be. After her Shikai, each subsequent visit became easier and easier to do, until it became a matter of course. Simply concentrate, focus on the Zanpaktou, and she found herself slipping into the world like walking through a door. And there, she saw Beowulf in all his mountainous glory. She still remembered the first time she had seen her Zanpaktou spirit, and smiled at the memory. Beowulf probably had not forgotten about that either. Who could forget a flailing silver-haired girl screaming panicked obscenities at you?

"Screw physics. I've got a cool idea, and I am doing it" She replied, which elected a deep, rumbling boom of amusement from Beowulf.
"It seems like you are trying to run and walk at the same time. Have you given any thought as to how you are actually going to pull it off, or are you just throwing attacks at dummies and hoping for the best?" Beowulf asked, his head coming low to be eye-level with Mirja. Between his one eye that had a deep red glint, and her silver eyes, they were creepy.

"To be honest, no. I just got a good idea and I wanted to practice it. I didn't want to involve anyone else yet because it's just an idea. I need my reactions to be sharper than they are though, because I can't quite pull off what I can see in my mind, which is why it isn't working. I can see how it can go down, I just can't work it physically" She said, scowling as she let off another palm-strike to the dark nothing that was Beowulf's rather dingy Inner World.

Now able to see properly, Beowulf could tell what Mirja was actually trying to pull off with these Palm Strikes. It looked to be a very complex maneuver however. Sitting back on his hind legs, Beowulf copied what he saw Mirja doing, which made the pink-haired girl burst into a fit of giggles. Beowulf stared back with a confused frown, waiting for her to explain the sudden bout of amusement.
"Seeing something as large as you trying to do martial arts is just...highly amusing. Sorry. You can keep doing your palm strikes if you want" Mirja finally announced.

"Ohh, well, you have offended me now. I don't want to keep doing my palm strikes" Beowulf replied. The deep, rumbling growl made it hard for Mirja to get tone and inflection, but she caught the teasing playfulness of his tone and smiled back.
"If you are so embarrassed, I'll leave you to it" She retorted, turning to prepare for her departure. Beowulf pouted loudly, a sign that he wasn't actually offended by her leaving, or her retort, believing that if that was Mirja's cutting wit, then it would struggle against warm butter.

Back in the Real World, Mirja returned to her strikes. Each one had strong, slow thought behind it, breath, visualize, feel her internal energy, and then strike at the target. At one point, it looked like she was getting somewhere, but it turned out to be a fluke, and she could not reproduce the results of the strike, which made her increasingly vexed as time went by. Eventually, her silent practice and ongoing genocide of straw dummies was interrupted by Beowulf.
"Try like this" He tutored, and then began to explain his way of executing the strike.

Mirja spent hours in the training grounds, the new insight Beowulf had given her drove her onwards, but only for so long. She had a basis down, a palm strike which stopped short of the target for a fraction of a second, cupped the plam, and then struck. The first hit bore some sort of fruit. As her palm hit the dummy, the entire thing shuddered and then the stand cracked. Cracked, but did not snap off and fly away like crazy. This, was progress. Unforuantely, it was the only bit of progress she had recieved since starting this training.

Time after time, strike after strike, she got nowhere with it. Eventually, she came to the conclusion that - ironically - she wasn't putting enough force into the strike. It was a conclussion that made Mirja grin with amusement. She, Princess Punch, the Hammer of the Gods, was not hitting the target hard enough. After a few wasted minutes giggling to herself, she went back to it. The realisation only brought despair however. She could put her force into it, or she could hit it properly, it did not seem like she was able to do both. And that, was annoying.

She couldn't be sure what was stopping her, but it felt mental, like she reflexively pulled the shot just before it hit the dummy. And then, like one of her own punches, it hit her. All these years of restraint, in fighting, in living, in loving....it had ingrained something so deep inside her she could not dig it out, and could not work around it. Every punch she threw, she focused on ignoring this ingrained restraint, but she couldn't do such a technical attack without focusing on the movements neccecery, which left her at it's mercy.

As if rebelling against herself and the block itself, Mirja slammed her fist into the nearest dummy, with enough force to not only snap the stand, but uproot the ground around it as it hit the wall and practically exploded. She was so stupid not to have seen it earlier, so pissed that it existed in the first place. And then, in the moment of mental instability and vernerability, she was hit by the ghost whispers once again. To much, to hard, she couldn't comprehend the feelings, couldn't hear what words were been spoken in this pesudo-memory.

Reality retunred some minutes later, with Mirja on the floor, her hands clapped over her ears, scratching at her skull as if to claw our these dam ghosts from her head. One of her nails scrapped across the scar on her forehead, and she suddenly froze. The scar was always a point of curious interest to her. With a body like hers, the force that would be needed to leave a scar like this one, was considerable. But she had it from the earliest days of the Academy, so it must have been done before she joined Shin'o Academy.

And just like that, she clocked what it was this ghosts were. Invaders. Userpers. Returning from the depths of the Abyss, they were the old girl, the original girl, come to kill Mirja and take over her body. This could not happen. Would not happen. Mirja refused to let it end like this. Whatever had caused this scar killed the old Mirja, and that would not change. She was in control. The veteran of the Fifty-Year War, the Silver-eyed Witch, the pink-haired hammer who had slain countless Hollows, and hunted the rogues of every race and faction.

She, would not yield to this new invader, trying to sneak by in and steal her mind after all this time, like a bastard who took credit when the work was done. Mirja would solidify her hold on who she was, find someone to stop the invasion, regardless of who it was, and crush them before she was crushed under the weight of history. Something not even her momentious strength could lift. And it all started with this technique. Something entirely hers, something she would not share, or give to anyone. Something to solifidy and establish her identity here, now.

Mirja stood up, and snarled softly at the idea of the other Mirja trying to take everything. Trying to come here, steal her Taichou, her body, her life. She then became aware that the scar she had clawed at was begining to bleed from the aggressive attention, so she quickly headed home. To sanctuary. Arriving at the decent sized building, she felt slightly calmer. She had put herself into these walls, and the walls returned a sense of self she was slowly losing. Patching up the scar, she returned to the dummy outside, and stared at it malevolently.

Not that it was the dummies fault that Mirja was slowly losing her grasp on reality and trying to nail down the need for solidification of her life. But it would still get the brunt of her irritation because of it.
"Ok, stupid frigging mental buggeration, I am going to do this, you are going to watch, and it will be glorious. There will even be cake, if I can get around to baking it" she exclaimed, to nobody in particular, or at all. "I wonder what cake Taichou likes. And her demon friend Ceal. I should ask them later"

Getting totally off track with the concept of cakes, Mirja was not detered physically, and thrust a palm towards the dummy, pulling the shot at the last second and cupping her palm before slamming into the humanoid construct. Her special dummy was a lot more durable than any others, so she could practice and not have to replace it every day like they did in the combat squad. The dummy shuddered and shook, Mirja able to feel the vibrations in the ground from where she stood. It seemed, she was getting somewhere. Maybe the cake had distracted her mental block.

Stupid though that thought pattern was, she couldn't help but think there was some merit to it. Maybe Mirja, who realized death's inevitable march was coming to her front door, had unlocked her restraints with a sudden belief that she no longer needed them. Dead people shouldn't hold back, they should live life to the fullest. Not that she really wanted to die, exactly, but it was a mentality she couldn't quite escape from. Consquence mattered naught to her anymore. Until she could nail this and remove the ghosts, there was no point in worrying anymore.

Renewed fire burst into her heart, roaring mightily, like Beowulf would. This strike, she could do it. There was no longer any doubt. She could do it, or she'd vanish like leaves in a breeze, and she'd no longer be around to care that she couldn't. So clearly, doing it was the only option left for her. She thought that, maybe if she named the end goal, what she really wanted to come from all this, it might help her achieve it. It certainly couldn't hurt at this point, and maybe the universe would like it.

"Fluid, flowing strike, wasteless, and efficent. Hitting a foe, but not moving them. Like, like....a Motionless Strike. Ohh, Motionless Fist. Wait, no, it's not exactly a fist. I wonder if a Fist would work better than a palm" her yammering, while getting away from her, had a good point. Maybe a fist would work better than a palm. Why she was thinking of a palm all this time, was something that, on reflection, Mirja didn't actually know. It just happened that way, like a lot of things about Mirja. "This is a conundrum for later, deep inspection"

Using big, scary words was fun, and Mirja needed all the fun she could get right now. So she headed back inside, to make some dinner for her and Taichou.

A punch. This concept buggered her. Followed her as she made food for her and Taichou. Rode heavy on her shoulders as she went to bed, and slept. It followed her as she woke up the following morning, went about her daily routine of hygine, and put on her uniform. Finally, she walked out to her back garden, and through off the concept violently onto the dummy. Her punch was one thrown by Beowulf-guided instinct. It seemed her Zanpaktou Spirit had not been sleeping, but restlessly persuing the idea behind the Motionless Fist. It was nice to have friends.

The punch twisted her fist at the point of impact, and the dummy shuddered more violently than she had ever seen it before. However, she knew that she had still not put the right kind of force into it. She needed more. More strength. Maybe if she actually expected to do what she had done, it would have worked, but the punch just sprung from her, like a bathroom break held for far to long. Still, she had a life to go to, and Taichou to look after before her punches. Taichou, she was the girl that made Mirja calm.

A girl like her, could keep Mirja's mind in one piece, sort of. It was still all over the place after last nights fractured epiphany, but looking after her made Mirja feel like she was worth her existance, worth living. And no mental projection of a woman would ever that take away from her. They would not. A few minutes of incoherent gibbering followed, only broken by Taichou coming out to see what Mirja was doing out so early. The truth was quickly buried away, Mirja couldn't put that burden on Taichou, and so instead she simply lied.

Not a problem, my dear. Personal stuff. Lets get food. The words seem to pacify Taichou, which was nice. Mirja didn't want to have to explain herself to the girl, that would mean telling her about what was riding her. Mirja instead made breakfast, something with pork shavings to really entice her little doll, and then it was back to the Combat Squad barracks. With her Flash Steps, it didn't take a long for her to arrive, and it was early again today, so she had the place to herself for a few hours. This really worked in her favour, since Mirja wanted to keep the training a secret until she was confident of it's awesome sucess.

Facing down the training dummy in front of her, she regained her focus from the very start, the focus that mimiced a dog with a sausage. But this time, she was sure the sausage was meaty. There would be no vegan tofu here today, pure flesh of slaughtered animals would sate her. Her mental metaphor kind of got off track and into a dark place, but that was basically her life now. She was resigned to not having a stable train of thought to ride on, it had since crashed.

Like her train of thought, Mirja's fist crashed into the straw dummy, twisting on impact, but not quite twisting right. It was hard to get it down right, and so the dummy simply vibrated violently and snapped the stand, falling over slowly and hitting the floor with narry a sound. She needed to work with the flow of internal power to pull this off. Needed to visualize the Reiatsu, bubbling and boiling inside her with no avenue for escape. It simply circled, around and around, getting increasingly more violent.

It was this concept that she applied to her fist. Moving onto the next training dummy, she prepared herself for the strike. Feel the power, as it reached her fist, she strike, fast and strong, the restraint of earlier, crumbled and weak from her mental breakdown, broke completely, and the fist collided with the dummy, in a glorious show of...nothing. The dummy didn't seem to react to being hit at all. This conundrum was a confusing one, until it seemed to swell internally after a second, and explode outwards with force unrivaled by any piece of dummy-wear.

Exploding the dummy had not really been what she had in mind, she merely wanted a punch that did not waste her power by sending the enemy flying backwards. She wanted a punch that soaked into the very bones of the target and made them take it all, everywhere. That was were the concept of Reiatsu flow came in. Her punch was like Reiatsu, as it got to every part of the body. And also apparently made inanimate things explode. Which was always a bonus, she could always go for more exploding fist techniques. Until now, it was only her fingers that made people explode, and not in the way of the dummy, that was for sure. But then, the question came to her mind, semi-bidden, like everything now.

Could she make people explode? How would she practice? It wasn't like there were people-stuffed dummies around. It was a great idea though. Stuff a few people into dummies, and then practice on them. Get the proper feel for punching flesh and bone rather than these training drones that they had to work with. Off on a complete tangent, she cast her gaze around and saw that, aside from the ones she had just now broken, all the dummies had been repaired. The Combat Squad really moved quick since Mirja came into promanance. She was glad that she had helped them evolve into greater minions of her fists! If that is what they really were. Mirja was Princess Punch after all, and it was only logical that Princesses had servants to deal with their every want and whim. So they were her servants, and she was the Princess, and logical could go get punched in the face if it disagreed with her. Like lots of things.

Then she jumped into the air and screamed in joy. Delayed celebration, certainly, but it was the best kind of celebrating. However, when she landed, she realized it was a premature celebration, it could be a fluke of a hit. She'd need to do it a fair few more times before she could make sure she had it down. But even a single hit was a victory over the invading mind bitch would was here to steal everything that made Mirja who she was. A fire was lit in her heart unlike any other. She was ready. For anything.