Do You Wanna Know? [Bambietta, Rangiku]

Well, for all her research and her efforts as a shinigami, Bambietta couldn't exactly say she felt like she was making terribly much progress compared to a year ago. She'd been growing a lot faster back then, and now she was just kind of learning a few new kido now and again. Were they more impressive? Yeah, she guessed so, but plateauing was the last thing Bambietta wanted to be doing. So she'd made an appointment with one of her old teachers, though apparently Professor Matsumoto was just about finished teaching. Not too surprising, she guessed. Seemed like she always had a little more on her mind than teaching.

"Ah, sorry I'm late!"

Bambietta tended to be exceptionally punctual, but one of her kido experiments had ended up going a bit longer than she'd have liked, and that had ruined her entire schedule for much of the day. In the end, it had only really led her to be a couple of minutes late compared to when she'd said she would be at this little tea shop on a quiet road in the Seireitei, but even a few minutes was unacceptable in her mind.

"Thank you for meeting me, Matsumoto-sensei!"

She couldn’t help but smile when she got that request to meet with one of her previous students; she supposed even though she’d stepped out of a teaching role, it didn’t mean she was done with it entirely. It felt nice to know that her previous students still felt comfortable enough to approach her for help outside of class, and she’d do her best to support them. Bambietta in particular was an odd case; she seemed like a girl in a rough spot trying to do better, and regardless of her history she tried to give her the most she could during those night classes. Though she caught wind of what she was up to nowadays, and she couldn’t help but feel proud, smiling and waving when she saw the woman coming her way.

“Heya! No worries, ya didn’t leave me hanging too long.” Her cheerful tone sought to diffuse any worry of Bambietta’s timing. Just because she thought she was fine didn’t mean the other woman felt the same way, “Of course! Line’s always open. Let’s go sit, and we can talk about what you need help with.”

"Thank you very much!" Bambietta was perhaps a bit overeager in her thanks, but admittedly, it was rare that she felt as though she could reach out to someone for help. It was extremely reassuring that she could manage to get this meeting, and she'd always enjoyed her lessons with Professor Matsumoto more than most of her other classes. She'd seemed to care more than most of the other teachers, and in her situation, that had gone a long way.

Ordering a cup of tea and taking a seat, she thought about how she ought to word her questions. She didn't want to just lay out a bunch of questions all at once, especially since this wasn't exactly an academic environment. "Have you ever heard of someone's zanpakuto responding to the wrong name?"

That about summed up her concerns. After all, she was definitely managing shikai, and it wasn't like she could fake that. But the fact that the spirit wasn't answering, and everyone seemed sure she was getting the name wrong, continued to bother her.

Rangiku couldn't help but give a fond smile and nod in response to Bambietta's energetic thanks. She was at least somewhat aware of her troubles from what she's witnessed, the least she figured she could do was help keep her spirits up rather than be another person to knock them down, intentional or not. She would be sat across from her, enjoying her own cup of tea, patiently waiting for her to ask whatever she wanted, gently placing her cup down with a raised brow as she'd tap her lower lip to that question, "Wrong name, huh? It's not common, but there's definitely been cases of it from what i'm familiar with; different reasons all around."

She'd tilt her head, giving Bambietta a questioning expression, "What makes you think it's the wrong name, though? Think it fibbed or something?"

"I'm not really sure, I don't know why it'd lie about it. But when I try and talk to it, it doesn't really answer, and I can't exactly say my shikai is...great. I can't even really use it without hurting myself."

Of course, maybe it was possible she did just have an awful zanpakuto. She'd heard that happened, and based on how different every zanpakuto spirit seemed to be, it wasn't out of the question to imagine that maybe she just got one that didn't talk. But weren't they supposed to be reflective of their user? That didn't exactly sound like her. Bambietta knew the sort of person she was, and 'silent' wasn't it even at her deepest core.

"I dunno. I can't really imagine why it'd lie about something like that."

Shikai hurting her? Something definitely was out of place - cases like that seemed to arise from something to do with it's development, but given how diverse Zanpakuto are, the root could be anything. Her eyes were deep in thought as she considered things, trying to figure what to ask her to start some kind of track, but this was chalking up to be an unusual case - a Shikai from a Zanpakuto that hasn't spoken to it's user...

"I'm certain you've been doing the normal routine of bonding with your sword, especially if you've achieved Shikai, so it can't be that..." She'd murmur, soon lowering her hand, "That is strange, though. How do you know the name if it's never spoken to you? Especially since it responds to the name... Has it ever tried to interact with you at all? Doesn't have to be in speech, it could be anything."

"Well that's the thing, it used to talk to me no problem. But once I learned its name it just stopped saying anything." Bambietta's voice had started to edge dangerously close to what one could probably call 'whining,' though she noticed that and made a concerted effort to sound a little more put together. It was just frustrating.

"I get that sometimes a zanpakuto is weird or moody, but this doesn't seem right," she continued, doing her best to at least help reason through this. She was hardly an expert or anything, but if nothing else Bambietta considered herself generally pretty intelligent. "Nowadays it doesn't really do anything. It transforms when I release it, but that's it."

She listened to her prior student's frustrations about the situation, feeling absolutely puzzled about what could be going on. She isn't sure if she ever heard of a case like this before, and it wasn't as if the spirit was blatantly refusing to respond. Even Haineko on her moodiest days gave some sort of response, and she was probably one of the most stubborn spirits she knew of. She really couldn't put her finger on what the issue exactly could be, and she could see how frustrated Bambietta was getting...

"Hey, cheer up," Rangiku would smile and gently pat the table in front of her as a subtle way of getting the other woman's attention, "The fact you've achieved Shikai at all is great, i'm real proud of you for sticking to it. Lemmie tell ya something; I still only have Shikai, too. If anything, I think i've only had Shikai longer than most of my peers. My spirit's on difficult side, but yknow what? I haven't given up. And if i'm not giving up, you aren't either."

Though she had a jovial edge to her tone, she clearly was pretty serious, "Sometimes things are gonna be difficult and not go your way, and that's alright. Maybe your spirit needs more time, maybe you need to grow a little more first - you're still young and coming out of a rough spot after all. Just make sure to take care of yourself and take a breather when you need to, yknow? Don't be too hard on yourself."

"Well...right..."

Bambietta sighed melodramatically as she nodded in agreement with what Rangiku was saying. After all, there wasn't anything else she could really do about this but keep trying, right? She'd gotten advice on how to deal with it, and she'd been putting it...a little bit into practice. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe not as well as she could've been.

"Thanks, Matsumoto-sensei. Guess it's a little hard to think of myself as young, but you guys up here really seem to always have a lot of years on me."

It was very odd, honestly, but talking about that was mostly a way of Bambietta avoiding being more up front with the actual important point, that she understood she needed to take things easy and not strain herself too much. That was definitely true, but actually putting it into practice was a whole other beast.

Her light locks swayed slightly as she'd gently lean forward somewhat, arms loosely crossed over the table in front of her with a raised brow and a knowing expression, though she remained with a friendly tone, "Bambietta. Your tea's getting cold."

She'd motion with her gaze to the quite untouched cup that no longer had steam rising from it, in comparison with Rangiku's own quite empty one. Though, she wasn't just pointing out an obvious thing for no reason, leaning back and softly smiling at her, "You're putting quite a lot into doing everything but relaxing, aren't you?"

It didn't take a lot of knowing the woman to understand how much she's pushed herself, and that she was likely not putting much into slowing down and not exerting for a bit, "You're gonna burn out if you don't give yourself some slow down time, yknow. I've had my fair share of students flunk tests because they overworked themselves studying - overdoing it doesn't equal better results. You gotta have down time and think about yourself ever so often."