What's the Difference Between Me and You? [Murasaki/Kagayaku, Solo]

Hey, kiddo. Time we talked.

Those weren't words Murasaki often heard from her father. Truth be told, the two of them didn't talk much at all, other than idle chit chat here and there. Was there a reason for that? Well, no, not really, they just...didn't have much to talk about. But now apparently they did, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. Nervous? A little.

Taking a seat on her bed, the blade of Kagayaku resting firmly in her lap, Murasaki took a deep breath, communing closely with the blade. Just relax, a talk with dad might even be nice. As she opened her eyes once more, she found herself not within her yurt, but under the grey, oppressive clouds that always filled her inner world when she met with her father. The fields were not green and vibrant, but empty and cold, and it always seemed as though a storm was imminent. Yet, that might still have brought too much life to this place.

"What did you wanna talk about?"

The girl looked over to the man she called her dad, a tall figure with flowing black hair and a gait that was, usually, fairly relaxed. But for once he seemed serious, and Murasaki wasn't sure she liked that look. It was almost off-putting.

Kagayaku was a man of more words than most might expect from just a zanpakuto spirit. Maybe that came with the territory of having enough independence to make a family, but who was to say? After all, he was just a sword, and swords weren't made to make families. Still, as he felt his daughter come into her inner world, he couldn't help but have the faintest bit of pride, and at the same time...a little bit of sadness.

"Few things. Guess the first one is that I'm real proud of you. I always knew you'd be able to make it big, but I'll be honest. Never imagined I'd have a wife in Zero Divison and a daughter that was a Captain. Then again, never imagined I'd have a wife or a daughter to begin with."

He was stalling a little bit, not really wanting to address what he considered to be the elephant in the room here. Kagayaku took a deep breath in through his nose, though of course he hardly needed to breathe or anything along those lines. He was just a spirit, after all. Turning then to his daughter, he looked at her with a stare that could only be described as gravely serious.

"But I'm getting worried about you too, kiddo. You're using that Musonzai a lot. I was impressed when you made it, but you always said it wasn't something to rely on. You're a strong girl, Murasaki, but I know things have fucked you up pretty bad. Tsubasa, Tatsuya, Law, you've had to watch loss after loss. I get it. I'd be torn up if I lost you or your mom. But you gotta cut that out, you gotta face your problems without that shit. Or I'm gonna stop helping you."

He brushed a strand of hair out of the way now, glancing upward at the cloudy sky.

"You know why you can't use my bankai, Murasaki? Why you can only use barely half the power I've got?"

"Well...thanks."

At first, Murasaki had a smile on her face, thinking maybe she'd just misunderstood this whole thing. The two of them didn't talk much, after all, so maybe she just didn't quite know how her dad would approach this kind of topic. He was always weird, after all. But the second he turned around, she knew that was wrong. She'd never seen her dad like that, not once in over 200 years of living. And as he spoke again, she quickly lost any semblance of a smile, a frown growing as she just...didn't know how to take that. Not from her own father.

"That's not fair. You can't- don't just act like I've been using it willy nilly like that! I use it when I have to, when there's no other option. I don't- I'm not just using it to run away from my feelings, dad. Don't act like I've done that. I spent a year running away, and that didn't get me anywhere. You know that!"

At that last sentence, she opened the fold of her dress for him to see, her undergarments and chest wrappings naturally keeping this from being some poorly-timed erotic act. Beneath the clothing was a scar of perhaps an inch at the longest, on the left side of her stomach.

"You know how hard that was, you know how close I came. You watched, you saw how much I had to learn from my friends. So don't...don't just treat me like a coward."

Closing the dress once more, Murasaki herself looked away as well, off onto the horizon of this dying field.

"You told me it was because you were mom's. What, was that just a lie?"

"You've used it every time I've watched you fight. Every single time, when push has come to shove, you've thrown your emotions out the window and gone into Musonzai without a second thought. You think I like seeing my daughter like that? Killing without any effort is my job, not yours. I'm the sword here, kiddo."

If she wanted to yell at him, then Kagayaku wouldn't pull any punches. His daughter was a tough girl, she could take it. And if she couldn't, then maybe she'd learn a thing or two.

"I knew you wouldn't be able to do it. Seppuku's not in your nature. If I thought that blade was going to move any deeper than it did, if I thought you'd actually spill your guts onto the floor, I'd have stepped in to stop you. Or were you so caught up in being upset with yourself that you forgot I could do that?"

It frustrated the zanpakuto to no end to see Murasaki like this. He didn't really know where he'd gone wrong, as a parent or as a blade. If he'd wanted to, he could have just raised her to be like him. Someone who lived for the kill, whose whole existence was defined by it. That wasn't what he'd promised Midori, though. That wasn't how their daughter should grow up.

"Yeah. Sure was. Not completely, though. Your mom always called me Kagayaku, her idea of a cute little nickname. You know why she named you that? We wanted it to be a sign you were born out of love, not just some degenerate trash like everyone wanted to call it. Because even if you're being a real idiot right now, you're my daughter. I love you, Murasaki."

Drawing the blade at his hip, Kagayaku pointed it forward at his daughter. It wasn't aggressive, but it was very much a challenge.

"If you win here, then I'll tell you my real name. I'll be there for you at my fullest. But if you go into Musonzai even for a fraction of a second, then I'll never do a damn thing to help you again. You could be dying on the ground like a dog and I would watch it happen. You're stronger than that. Fight me like a woman, not like a fucking sword.""

He knew that she was strong enough to best him. His wife might have been far stronger, but he hadn't been with her in a very long time. By all accounts, he was Murasaki's zanpakuto, and it showed. Kagayaku was ready to lose this, and in fact he hoped that he did. He wanted to see his little girl shine.

"That's not- That's not the same at all! I'm not just killing without any effort, I'm doing my best. I have to do what's right dad, even if it's not good for me. Isn't that what responsibility is? I'd be a terrible Captain if I just let my emotions stop me."

The words about her near-seppuku felt like ice water coursing through her veins. He'd known and he hadn't stopped her anyway? He hadn't comforted her, said anything to help? Why? Wasn't he her dad? Murasaki could barely contain her emotion, and she clenched her hands tightly into fists as she looked up at her father.

"I'm not an idiot, don't call me that. I've done my best. Was it not good enough? I don't- I don't know why you're suddenly acting like this. Why you didn't tell me sooner. If you love me so much then why do you just let me hurt alone?"

Standing as she drew Keifu from its sheathe, Murasaki collected herself and entered into a relaxed stance. She didn't really want this, but she knew that he'd attack her whether she wanted it or not. Still, for now she was on the defensive.

"Being a dad isn't about being a sword, it's about being a man. A sword doesn't care about its user. So fine, if you want to just be a sword, then I'll treat you like one."

"You're not listening."

Kagayaku lept toward his daughter in a flash of white light, swinging his blade upward in a short, merciless arc. The girl was quick enough to parry something like that, and his knowledge of that fact was confirmed as he felt his blade slide up hers. It didn't matter, he was just as good as she was, but with one major difference.

He just wanted to win.

The moment his blade began to grind across Murasaki's own, Kagayaku kicked out quite mercilessly, his boot landing very squarely in his daughter's stomach as it did so. He knew that wouldn't be enough to down her, especially given the disadvantageous positioning he was hitting her from, but it was enough to make their spacing more even again, to put him in an advantageous position and give him a second to continue speaking.

"You're not controlling your emotions, Murasaki, you're just pushing them away. Look at you, you're getting mad at me already. You think Musonzai is some masterpiece that comes from perfect calm? You wouldn't even need it if you were really that in control of your emotions. Use your head, kiddo. You keep that up, and you're just gonna be an emotionless machine, turning that on every time you don't want to face reality."

He approached her for another strike then, this time an overhand blow that, in all likelihood, had the potential to simply bisect his daughter if she didn't react correctly to it. He assumed she would.

"I am listening! You're just wrong!"

Murasaki's breath hitched in her throat as her father's kick slammed into her stomach, and she very nearly fell to one knee in pain from the blow. But if she did, she knew she'd be the easiest target alive, and so she kept her footing, shaky though it might have been for a moment or two. She couldn't keep up the defense forever, even if she didn't like the idea of just attacking her own dad. Even...even if he was talking to her like this.

"It's not fair to expect me to handle things like that! You've always left me on my own! I grew up alone, I went through the academy on my own! You never told me anything was wrong, and now that I finally have friends, have a division, have people who help me, you decide to tell me I've been doing everything is wrong!?"

As Kagayaku swung downward at her, Murasaki tensed every muscle in her legs, leaping directly forward to her father's right. Given his blade was moving toward the left, that would do well, and she swung her blade neatly through his side. It wasn't a decisive blow, but it very much left a mark, slicing through cloth and flesh effortlessly. The moment she passed, she quickly took a second step, catching herself and turning back around for another strike, this one upward across his back. Another clean hit, and this one far more damning than the first.

"If you didn't want me turning out this way, then you should have said something. You don't really care at all, do you?"

"I didn't realize you wanted me to treat you like a child, Murasaki."

The wounds his daughter had inflicted were extremely painful, but Kagayaku wasn't out of this one yet. Not by a longshot. He turned to face his daughter with blinding speed, his blade slicing downward with such speed that, had Murasaki not been as fast as she was, surely would have killed her. As it stood, she still could not evade it entirely, and Kagayaku's sword became stained red with Murasaki's blood, as a not-insignificant length of her hair was cut away as well.

"You want me to carry you through your life? Want me to tell you what's right and wrong, keep you from ever making a mistake? This is what I'm talking about kiddo. You're so wrapped up in your own head that you don't think about the bigger picture. You think being sad, being angry, is just some universal bad. Don't be fucking stupid. You think I don't care? I wouldn't even be doing this if I didn't care."

Raising his weapon so that it ran parallel to the ground, Kagayaku lifted his offhand and gently tapped the flat of the blade with one finger, uttering only a single word as he did so.

"Bankai."

The moment his finger struck steel, the sword began to vibrate at a speed far greater than could be called natural. The speed of it filled the air with a hum, one which echoed at such a ghastly frequency as to make Murasaki nearly have to cover her ears. The awful noise flooded the whole of the inner world, and as Kagayaku raised the blade again, it seemed to almost shimmer through the air, a trail not unlike heat distortion following after it. He swung once more, but this time the sword seemed almost invisible, its speed nearly impossible to gauge due to both the unholy sound and the wavering of its appearance. Unlike the previous strikes, Kagayaku was unsure if Murasaki could handle this.

Murasaki wanted to give a rebuttal to Kagayaku, wanted to tell him he was wrong. But she didn't have anything to say. She couldn't think of a retort, couldn't think of anything else she was supposed to say to that- Was she still just acting like a kid? Was she just a girl even after 200 years? She didn't know, but what she did know was that she wasn't going to die here. If he wanted to be a sword, then she'd still treat him like one. He wasn't her dad right now, but-

She'd never seen her father's bankai. She'd always wanted to, but it had never occurred to her that it might bet his...awful. The shrill whine that ran through the air practically tunneled into her ears, and it took all the more effort from the verdant-haired girl not to fall onto the ground and throw up from the noise. It was sickening beyond words, and as she watched the blade in Kagayaku's hand, she realized that maybe she didn't want to see this bankai anymore.

As the sword swung toward her, Murasaki knew almost immediately that there was only one way she'd be able to handle this. She couldn't tell when the blade would strike her, but that was fine. Fighting a zanpakuto meant the blade was a part of him, and if it was part of him-

"Bankai."

Murasaki swung her own blade such that it would surely strike Kagayaku's, and as it did so, the whole of the battlefield took on the familiar, yet profoundly surreal filter of Keifu Bunki. Her blade struck her father's, and while the effect of her Bankai came into place, the impact was far stronger than she had expecting, and came far sooner. She had not been ready for it, and it struck her that, without this, she would likely have lost this fight without question.

Nevertheless, she had a far more advantageous position now, even if the hum pulsing through the air still made her feel sick to her stomach. She watched for any incoming strikes from her father, and knowing fully that the time for holding back was over, swung her blade with a thorough intent to win. If he wouldn't hold back, then neither would he. She swung her blade once- Senmaioroshi.

"Finally listening? Or did you just give up on talking? You're close to shutting down now, I can see it in your eyes. You want to just turn off your emotions, you want to be able to fight without dealing with it. Do it, I dare you. I fucking dare you to spit in my face like that."

With the release of his Bankai, Kagayaku's natural bloodlust was starting to come forward, and it was only the fact that he was fighting his own daughter that kept him from really cutting loose, from just dicing her into pieces and letting that be the end of it. But he couldn't do that to her. Maybe that was just what being a dad did to you.

As the thousand slashes of Murasaki's Senmaioroshi came forward, Kagayaku simply replied with his own. Did she think he couldn't manage a technique like that? For a sword, especially one of his caliber, it was practically child's play to do that. No matter what she did, he could do too, and that was what made this battle so crucial. It was not a matter of who was more skilled, who was more powerful. No, this was simply a battle of the mind, to test whether Murasaki truly had the resolve to face him down without ignoring the truth of what was in her heart.

After every slash of the 1000 had been beaten back by his own, Kagayaku retaliated with a technique that he doubted Murasaki would have used. Modeled after the supposedly perfect Tsubame Gaeshi, it was in fact a completely mundane technique, but one difficult to counter due simply to the skill required to use it. Not some esoteric, near-magical attack, but simply a movement of the blade in an almost triangular path, a pair of diagonally downward strikes that ended in a third rising slash. He knew Murasaki would see it coming, but he knew more importantly that there was only one way for her to counter it. It was too quick and too merciless for her to simply dodge, and it put her in the exact position that Kagayaku had hoped to cause.

She would die, or she would cut him down.