AN: This is not Captain Mom. This is pre-Gotei 13 Yachiru, pre-Zaraki, while she was still a 'villain'. You don't want to mess with her. The prompt for this fanfic was the question: "What If Yachiru never became Retsu?"
Yachiru lowered her blade as her last fight ended. It was disappointing, the latest Quincy man had charged her with nothing but fear in his weapon, and as such he'd been almost boring – there had never been any threat to her. She looked around for another fighter, a stronger fighter, one who could give her a fight worth swinging her blade it, but found them all retreating. Why were they retreating…? They were enemies; they were to be eliminated.
"Yamamoto! They're getting away!"
Yachiru called to the much older man, but he waved her off. She prepared to leap into flash step, but Yamamoto's harsh voice stopped her.
"Let them go."
She leapt anyway, just to find him at the end of her first step. He was angry at her, and the fire shone in his eyes. As he stopped her, the enemies finished fleeing; escaping into some far-off region they'd never be found in. The thought pissed Yachiru off.
"Old man, you let them get away!"
"They were retreating. To kill them as their backs were turned would have been wrong."
"It doesn't matter which way their backs are facing. We came here to kill them!"
That their battle philosophies were very different was plain. She was in favor of completely destroying an enemy. He had rules of battle that were very clear cut to him, and to defy those rules were worse than being on the opposing side.
"They'll be back; you haven't seen the last of them."
She was right, and the older man knew it. "Then we'll deal with it. You nearly crossed a line."
"A line you made. There are no rules in war, old man."
Yamamoto held his stare, his flaming sword still at his side. "If you fight on my side, you fight with my rules."
There was a derisive scoff. Yachiru pulled at the heavily bloodstained haori she was wearing – a haori that had been sparkling clean when he'd presented it to her. "I never agreed to any of that shit. I agreed to fight. If this rag meant I was bound by fighting rules, you can kiss my ass."
"Language. Your speech isn't becoming of a young woman."
That only enraged her more. "No, but it's the way my teacher sounded, and the way I speak, and the way your little running dogs speak, too. Honor gets you killed. If you're gonna fight, don't try to pretend there's a good way to kill someone and a bad way – as long as someone's dangling off the end of your sword by the end, you did it right."
Her expression was set, and her eyes flashed just as well as his did. He flexed his sword arm, weapon pointing perilously close to her, and she smiled a bloodthirsty grin.
"Try it. Old man, you can't kill me. Your losses are heavy, and what few idiots that still flock to your side for 'bravery' and 'honor' are need to clean up this mess. As soon as you raise your blade, I'll raise mine, and even if I die, I'll take everyone else out with me. By your power or mine, if we fight today, you fought your war in vain."
She ripped the haori off her shoulders. This was just another idiot; another man who saw tits and assumed she was inferior in some way – this man, because she didn't conform to his ideas about battle or her own speech. Fuck it. She'd carved the bloody path on her own, and she'd go back to that existence. The last few months of companionship with others her own strength had almost softened her, and she'd learned much, but at the end of the day she was a freak among freaks. She didn't need these or anyone else to guide her path any longer. She and her sword made their own way. Her long black hair clung to her shoulders, sopping wet and beginning to clump with the blood and viscera of the lives she'd taken, and she walked a few steps before flashing away. In that time, though, she had one last message for the judgmental fool who'd tried to rein her in.
"This won't be the last time you see me – but when you do, I'll be on the other side of the battlefield. It'll be on your own head."