WARNING: Oh so slight spoilers for the manga.

People are grotesque, selfish things. They take what they want from you, and then they stab you in the back and leave you for dead. It's nothing personal, really, it's just the way the world works. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. That sort of thing.

The Soul Society may put on airs, but shinigami are still people whether they admit it or not, and Mayuri Kurotsuchi knew that well.

He had helped them when they asked him to, after all. Mayuri had been so eager to prove himself that, looking back, it sickened him. Stupid, so stupid.

Central 46 said it would be a gruesome job but what he had to do was irrelevant to him and so was how he decided to accomplish it. They had given him no guidelines, and had even told him to disregard the moral impactions, which he most certainly did. All that mattered was the results, and those were spectacular.

Mayuri had been so proud of himself. He thought he had earned himself a place in the Seireitei for sure; and he had, it just wasn't the spot he had expected. They had told him he would not be persecuted for his actions because they had to be done, and they had told the truth, the assholes.

Maybe it was his cold execution of the order that had frightened them, or maybe it was his raw talent. Either way he ended up in the Maggots Nest.

Such an idiotic boy he had been! Trusting those aristocratic pigs.

Truthfully, it was not the first time Mayuri had been betrayed, nor would it be the last, but it was the most significant instance because he had finally seen the world for what it truly was.

Mayuri had been lucky though: Kisuke Urahara had found him useful.

At first Mayuri had not wanted to leave the Maggots Nest. Why would he want to go back out into a world where everyone was looking to take a bite out of him? Yes, the prison he occupied was really no different, but at least the people down there were limited in number.

But the mad genius could not refuse an offer to do what he loved most again.

Admittedly, he ended up admiring Urahara. Though not in one of those gushy, fatherly way. Uk! No! Urahara was simply another scientist, one who was almost willing to do what it took to advance, and it was that 'almost' that had earned Mayuri's slight approval. At least the Captain was not entirely constrained by morals.

And then Kisuke had become a fugitive, and Mayuri had inherited his division.

Mayuri had not been affected by his Captain's betrayal, really. He was just a bit peeved about being left out of the other scientist's experiments.

He could not dwell on that, however, he had a division to rebuild. No, that was not the right word. Recreate was more like it, and recreate he did! All the way down to the grotesquely mutated and horribly disfigured pencil pushers.

But Mayuri soon found that things were not quite right. His division had yet to become truly his, and the problem lied within his need for a lieutenant.

Mayuri would not have some incompetent as his second, but he wouldn't ever open himself up to attack again. He needed someone he could trust, but such a person could not be found in this world.

They could, however, be made.

And that is how Nemu came to be: Mayuri's daughter.

He made sure she was utterly devoted to him as her maker and gave her little to no contact with the outer world until she was in her late teens (only physically of course, as Mayuri had no time to just wait for his creation to grow up). He always told her how worthless she was, and how stupid, and how much patience he had to have with her.

Nemu soaked it all up, of course, and did all she could to try and earn his praise. She never got it though because Mayuri knew that the minute he did that a spark would be ignited in her. What kind of spark didn't matter because the end result would be self-confidence, and self-confidence led to aspiration, and aspiration led to ambition, the main ingredient of betrayal.

And Mayuri would not be betrayed by his creation.

That was why Nemu had to be kept down, that was why she had to be punished so harshly and so often. She could never think herself good enough to stand on her own two feet. She had to need Mayuri.

This was something Mayuri had resolved long before Nemu had even been a drop of blood under the microscope. So why, now, at this very moment did he not have the urge to punish her? Nemu was acting of her own accord, after all, something that should warrant a sharp slap and a long speech on her stupidity.

But he just watched her from the door way as she watched the monitors. She didn't even realize he was there, she was simply too absorbed.

Really, the Quincy was only knitting, nothing of interest there, but Nemu just kept staring and staring. Mayuri let her for a while longer before finally speaking up.

"You can never trust them." His voice startled her and she spun around. She was expecting a beating, he could tell because she braced herself for the blow, but he had no intention of striking her . . . yet. "They are only chivalrous until it is no longer convenient for them to be so. Its only real purpose, after all, is to give a reason why one person is superior to another. Why they should have the right to rule, or kill, or subjugate, and not another." Mayuri hmphed and looked away. "As if there are such rules other that the rule of nature."

His eyes went to the monitors as he began to move forward. "People will betray you in the end, if you are fool enough to trust them. Hah," Mayuri laughed a little as he switched the screens off himself, "even if you don't trust them they will betray you—everyone will eventually, it is the only way to get by in life . . . or death."

Silence passed between them in the now dim room

"I will never betray you, father." Nemu whispered, finally breaking the spell that had overcome the genius several minutes before.

A sharp crack echoed around the room as Mayuri backhanded Nemu so hard she fell to the ground. It was amazing how enraged those six words made him. Even more blood boiling was that she had called him 'father'. For some reason that word had always, always bothered him, which was why he had expressly forbidden her from calling him such a long time ago.

"Stupid girl! Here I am trying to give you advice, and you say something like . . . like THAT!" Mayuri sneered at her. "I should have known that you were too stupid to understand!"

"Forgive me, Lord Mayuri-" Nemu apologized from the floor but he stormed out before she could finish.

Mayuri growled to himself as he stalked toward his lab. He had the desperate need to dissect something, something living. Preferably the last Quincy.

A/N:

There! A little bit of fatherly fluff from the most unlikely of people.

Please R&R!