Ayane Ichijo

Ayane Ichijo is very serious and may seem cold and antisocial when first speaking to her, though she can be caring of those she deems good. She is one who wants to bring justice to this world, even acknowledging her way of killing those she deems evil is also evil in it of itself.

While she normally seems very serious, in particular when facing a particularly vile person she becomes really fucking enraged, and although she has come to realize that murder is wrong, she will still not hesitate to take the life of someone she has deemed evil. This sort of raging contempt is reserved for those who are particularly cruel just because they feel like it, and she appears to feel cathartic bringing them to justice. This isn't exactly true when facing someone who isn't a heartless monster, though she will dole out justice if she needs to.

As for her manner of speaking, she's mostly serious and to the point, without really speaking formally and can be said to have a slightly rough manner of speaking, though not excessively vulgar or anything. Or more specifically, she will make excessively vulgar threats and insults on those she believes are pure and complete evil.

Ayane Ichijo is a character from Fullmetal Daemon: Muramasa, a hero of justice. She holds the idea that evil must be punished with death, and to improve the world it must be rid of all evil people. She follows this idea almost obsessively, dedicating her entire life to this pursuit of rising up against evildoers, despite her only being in highschool.

Her father has instilled in her a sense of justice, and instilled in her the idea that you can not question why evil things are bad, believing that questioning why something is bad opens the door to justifying evil.

Over time though this belief has been challenged, and she's realized that nobody is purely either good or evil, and that someone's good can turn out to be someone else's evil, meaning taking someone's life is also an act of evil.

Even now knowing this, Ichijo doesn't falter in her pursuit of justice. Even if taking an evil person's life is evil, she will do it because otherwise, who else will bring them to justice? Furthermore, perhaps if someone like her kept punishing evil, then one day all of mankind will finally believe all evil actions have a price, and so evil will be eradicated.

Finally, what's interesting is that she isn't exactly a utilitarian, and instead more of a consequentialist. One way this is shown is when she kills Yusa Doushin. Even though the utilitarian response would be to leave him alive because killing him would upset the political climate too much, because he's a terrible person Ichijo decided to recklessly kill him anyways. Additionally, in an alternate reality where Ichijo has the tsurugi Muramasa (where if she kills a bad guy she must kill a good guy too), she refuses to kill anyone if she's not able to find a good guy willing to be sacrificed, which means she's stood by while people commited evil.

To give some background about the setting, Ayane Ichijo lives in a dystopian Japan (known here as Yamato), where the nation is ruled by the tyrannical Rokuhara Shogunate, lead by 4 generals (named Yusa Doushin, Chachamaru Ashikage, Shishuku Ohtori, and Raicho Imagawa) and a shogun who don't care much for their people, and where acts of tyranny by Rokuhara are common. At the same time however, a group known as GHQ (an extension of the Britannia Empire, where the two big empires in the world currently are the Britannian Empire and the Russian Empire) is also vying for power to control Yamato through indirectly influencing the civilian population to believe that GHQ's control over Yamato would be better than Rokuhara's, such that the people would view it justified when GHQ declares war on Rokuhara.

Also, battles take place in machines called "tsurugi" which are basically robot mecha that are piloted from the inside cockpit by people calledv "musha". They are much smaller than your average mecha though and a bit more humanoid, being like 3 times the size of an average person. Basically like a really huge suit of armor. Sentient tsurugis refer to their pilots as "Mido".

For some backstory on Ichijo herself, Ichijo's father was another one who believe in justice strongly, and instilled his same beliefs in Ichijo. Ichijo's father led to the death of one of his only comrades due to his belief in justice, and to atone he forced Ichijo to kill him. After this she was raised by her grandmother, who was a little eccentric and who Ichijo found annoying sometimes.

Ayane Ichijo wields the tsurugi Masamune, a legendary tsurugi said to rival Muramasa. The sentient tsurugi is obstinate and unflexible in its pursuit of justice and kinda acts deranged sometimes, meaning of course it gets along very well with Ayane as they share a single braincell. That is, except when it comes to justice, as Masamune is even more inflexible in Ayane. To summon it she uses her chant "where there are demons, I slay them. Where there is evil, I smite it. Mine is the way of the sword!". With the tsurugi she has a couple techniques:

Battles between musha (those wielding tsurugi) are typically either ground based or air based. Ground-based duels are similar to regular samurai duels, but tsurugi battles primarily take to the air. First both tsurugis aim for an altitude advantage over the other. Then, the one above dives to strike the one below, so the one below must fly up to meet them. The one at a higher altitude has the advantage as their strike is aided by gravity while the other works against gravity. After the clash, the tsurugi initially higher continues diving down to gain speed, to increase their speed again to rise to the greater altitude next clash. The tsurugi initially lower can't keep rising as they won't have the speed to keep 'em in the air, so they then dive to increase their speed so, but they're still disadvantaged as they started their dive with less speed than the other tsurugi.

Oboro: Sword of Burning Flesh- The second justice, a technique feeding her heat into her blade, turning it into a burning sword that harms herself and her opponent

Sphere of Dancing Flames- The third justice, uses pilots energy as a fuel-air explosive, with Masamune's armor as the payload. Onken:Claws of Piercing Bone- The fourth justice, she uses her own ribcage extending from her chest to bind her opponent in place. Mugen:Arrows of Judgement- The fifth justice, firing her fingers at her opponent. Kappuku: The Visveral Bonds- The sixth justice. She binds her target with her own intestines that are augmented with her armor. Hero Incarnate- The seventh and final justice. Even after being killed she still will not die, instead becoming something else, not human nor tsurugi. Karmic Balance: lets Ayane copy any ability that touches her armor.

One final thing, but as a tsurugi uses their special move (so in Ichijo's case her Seven Justices), they'll end up using their body's calories as fuel. If they overuse their power, they'll experience "grayout", where their heat reserves are dangerously low. Cold will overtake their body as their vision grows gray, and they'll slowly lose motor control and die if they continue pushing themselves.

As for relationships with other characters, the foremost is Kageaki. Initially she disliked Kageaki as he always tried to solve things nonviolently, like him willingly groveling to a yakuza to prevent kids from getting hurt. After seeing him in combat she realized that he was actually morally strong and groveled to the yakuza not out of cowardice, but out of strength in not wanting to escalate the conflict unnecessarily.

After this she followed him on missions, but eventually she learned the truth behind Kageaki, realizing that he also kills innocent people too. She was heartbroken by this and resolved to kill Kageaki, but after learning about his curse being the law of balance (where for every evil person Kageaki kills, he must kill someone good) and how he places all the blame of the murders on himself, she spares Kageaki and instead has him work under herself, saying that she will kill the bad guys so that Kageaki doesn't have to (because if he does then he also has to kill a good guy).

However while this works for a bit, Kageaki eventually rejects this and decides to fight Ichijo to the death, attempting to change Ichijo's mind on justice. This is because he believes that killing is inherently evil no matter your reason, and that you can't dehumanize others. Not only that, but later Ichijo founds out that an "evil" monk she killed then indirectly causes the death of an innocent civilian who the monk saved, showing even if the monk was "evil" to Ichijo, he was "good" to some people. It also comes down to how Ichijo influences other to take her path in the pursuit of justice, which leads to many getting killed when they rise up.

Ichijo accepts that even killing bad guys may be a form of evil, and that she may be leading many who follow her toan early death, but still chooses to kill the bad guys anyways, in hopes that a demon like her will pave the way for humanity to reject evil eventually, thus she fights against Kageaki and wins.

Ichijo doesn't pay attention in school, but that's because she's already studied the materials before the school even started, and she will answer if called on As her father said, "the only person who can decide what knowledge is worth learning is one who knows everything".