2. Found


Disclaimer: Bleach & its characters are the property of Tite Kubo

Notes: This is a re-edited version of Chapter 2 posted on 20 May. I found the ending to the previous one lacking punch, so there's a bit more detail & explanation at the end.


6.

"There are some fancy stories flying around of what you and your bodyguard went to do in the human realm."

Everything about Captain Retsu Unohara is immaculately white, Soi Fon thinks, from robes to her medical equipment, to the reflected light trickling down her forehead, to her smile – slight, but anesthetically relieving, with a faint showing of teeth – which she accepts. The senior Captain removes fragments of bone from the grooves of Soi Fon's knuckles and, close up, she looks like an angel picking through the insignificant dirt of a human frailty.

The older woman stirs, her white robes creasing into a series of fin-like ripples, before finally sliding back into position as she devotes her time to Soi Fon's outstretched hand, freckled with incisions running parallel to the muscle. When she undoes a spiral of chipped bone and wasted flesh from the largest cut on her right hand, Soi Fon pretends to stare at the emblem of the 2nd Division perched on Captain Unohara's shoulder.

As all the fingernails of her left hand, smothered away, close in on themselves, trading pain with pain.

Soi Fon finds it unusual: a captain treating a captain, when any of the Division's medics would suffice. But when she remembers the un-ceremonial stain of the traitor's blood all over her own Shinigami Captain's robes, and the nature of their kill (slaughtering?), she thinks it might be all for the better. When Captain Unohara artistically dresses the wounded and nestles the hand into a bandage, Soi Fon produces a smile of her own.

"You're welcome," the older Captain says.

But when she rises to leave, Soi Fon finds a hand pressing down on her shoulder. Captain Unohara's voice, once inquisitive, falls down on her like a bucket of water:

"Are you sure you are all right, Captain Soi Fon?"

Soi Fon laughs – perhaps a little too mechanically, she thinks. Against the gentle downward pressure of Captain Unohara's hand she gets to her feet. She intends to don her uniform, but she imagines how walking around with such violent evidence of her fight would look like, and she thinks against it.

"Because when your bodyguard brought you in," the older Captain continues, a frown streaming across her face, "you were covered in so much of someone else's blood that –"

"I'm fine. Thanks."

Then she feels sorry for such an automated, curt reply that she compels herself to bow with thanks to her doctor. In the process, she feels the bandages strain on her knuckles, as if her entire right hand were set in stone.

"It's nothing," Captain Unohara says. Again, another warm, motherly smile so blameless that Soi Fon can already start to feel guilty about the host of lies she has offered. As she leaves, the older Captain's voice continues, floating like a breeze over her exposed shoulders:

"You should thank your bodyguard who carried you back. You two really remind me of yourself and –"


7.

At the 2nd Division headquarters, she finds Juri at the training grounds, faithfully following the Special Forces daily sparring programme. There are plenty of onlookers, but Soi Fon wants to settle this fast. She presses a finger to Juri's back, and manually plucks her from the detail. The younger girl complies corrects herself with a bow, and excuses herself.

All around them whispers and wayward words flung from loose tongues echo amongst the other Onmitsukido like a passing drizzle.

They walk, out of the grounds, away from the buildings, to where the ground is unkempt, disused and cloudy with circling insects. Grass-eaten ruins of damaged training equipment begin to stalk them the further from the grounds they go. When she is sure they will not be overheard, Soi Fon stops. The wind is teasing her bare, pale shoulders. She puts her fists into the folds of her combat uniform and faces Juri.

"What have my men been saying about me?" she demands. She deliberately keeps her voice barely audible, fusing it with the billowing banter of the insects.

"That you lost control of yourself yesterday." Then she stops, flinches and adds: "That were distracted, and almost got defeated. And that makes your position as Captain questionable."

As Juri speaks, Soi Fon sees her bodyguard at attention. Everything about her is in place save for her feet, which shuffle, out of uncertainty or fatigue or both.

"What about my Lieutenant?"

"He thinks it was just a minor oversight, and that we should concentrate on finding who is really intimidating you."

Soi Fon permits a customary smirk, which she openly shows to her bodyguard. Just like him, she thinks. With her bandaged hand floating, she gestures at Juri.

"Now what do you think?"

"Captain, my opinion doesn't –"

"Enough with the formalities. I want to know."

An interval passes between them: Soi Fon sees her subordinates eyes sprint to the surroundings – she has seen this before, in desperate criminals made unstable with seeking escape. All around the insects chatter without pause, wind grazes the distance between them, and someone from the main building opens and slams shut a window.

"You shouldn't have listened to her taunts, Captain."

A very well-phrased reply, Soi Fon believes. She injects effort into her feet, feeling her hamstring muscles tense and then tighten. And as she inhales, she closes the distance between the two, and hangs an arm around her bodyguard's shoulder. When she speaks, she feels Juri stiffen with surprise, as if her breath were a claw on Juri's neck:

"So you know all about me and my sempai," she says. "I wouldn't have expected any less."

"Enough to not mention her name in your presence," Juri compliments.

"Are you playing around with me?" Soi Fong retorts, feeling her face cascade into a frown at the wisecrack. But she has a better idea. She takes a controlled quota of air, braces her muscles for movement – but before she performs the move, she attaches her hand to Juri's wrist and, just as she streaks away, challenges her subordinate:

"Follow me. Let's see how good your shunpo is."

As she expects, the initial three-step is so fast that Juri stumbles but still reacts in time to absorb her fall with just a knee. Soi Fon does not wait, but she reverses her steps – three, two, one – and she bursts past the fallen Juri, dragging her to her feet.

"Follow me with your shunpo. That's an order!"

And Soi Fon lets the counting take over, remembering to exhale at every four-step: one, two, three, four –

She traverses beyond the grounds of the 2nd Division's headquarters – beyond the fortress – beyond the ramparts – and out onto the Rokugai. Here, with crowds of people below them, Soi Fon continues their game, carefully allowing her swift feet to stream from rooftop to rooftop. Only the faint scratching of feet on tile informs her Juri is not far behind.

The surroundings stagger – from jade-tinted rooftops to black mortar ceilings – indicating to her a transition into the far-western edge of the Rokugai. Trees, once sparse, begin to bloom from between the gaps between the houses. But it's not just the landscape, she tells herself: at least once, Soi Fon finds the inevitable tug of lactic acid squeezing at her hamstrings and her breath running short.

She finishes her last count – four thousand three hundred and twenty-one – and lets her feet finally stand still, her left calf especially twitching with exhaustion. Through her sweat-filtered vision she makes out her bodyguard – a distortion in the air, a scraping of heels – as she lands, overcorrects and collapses into Soi Fon's arms, her body beating with heavy panting.

Soi Fon brings her to the ground: they are in a deserted edge of the Rokugai, more rural than anything else. As she rises to her feet, her hand reattaches itself to Juri's wrist as she asks:

"Can you stand?"

It takes some effort, but Soi Fon's one arm still possesses enough strength to haul Juri to her feet. Juri's panting does not stop. A shadow of sweat pools at the back of her neck. Her hand still connected, Soi Fon begins walking and Juri follows, limping, like child trailing behind her mother.

"Here, this way." She weaves through the drab street, slowing her pace for Juri to catch up.

And she turns into a shop at the far side of the street. The patrons stare. Some, not willing to share in any fuss two elite Shinigami might provide, start to leave quietly. Soi Fon scowls at them as they troop past her; she heads to a table, plants the exhausted Juri on a chair and summons the elderly owner with a swish of her forefinger.

"Cha," she says. Within moments, the owner parts with two cups and a pot of tea. Soi Fon pulls the owner close and says, "We will compensate for any loss in business."

The remaining patrons continue to stare, but some tabletop conversation has resumed. More importantly, Soi Fon notices Juri has gathered enough strength to sit straight – she saws an arms across her forehead to eliminate the persistent trails of sweat sneaking from her fringe. Soi Fon takes the pot, pulls a stream of rust-coloured tea from the stout into both cups and places one in front of Juri.

"Drink up."

"Captain?"

"What?"

"Is this some sort of rite?" Her voice is burdened with sweat, and confusion.

"Because if it is, I would like to know if my performance was good enough for you."

Soi Fon brings the porcelain to her lips: first the cold rim of the cup, then the burning flood of iron-tasting tea, mingled with un-pressed crisp fragments of tea leaves, like sand sloping down the back of her throat. She lowers the cup to the table, with the chime of wood against porcelain. No one else in the shop notices, except Juri who, deprived of an answer, follows every single move.

"My sempai and I used to come here often –

"She said she liked the tea here –

"The more bitter, the more relaxing."

Soi Fon feels that Juri does not give any indication she understands. But she as she refills her cup and holds it in mid-air waiting for Juri to take it, she tries to put into focus what Captain Unahara had said earlier.

She tries to convince herself, as Juri cautiously stares back, that this girl is really like herself – and she, the weak underling, has actually taken over the role of –

Juri downs the entire cup with one swig. She waits for Soi Fon to finish, then before refilling the Captain's empty cup then committing herself to hers. Soi Fon allows this. And this routine repeats itself, four to five times, Captain and bodyguard drinking tea in silence, while the din of the restaurant pours away into the space between them.


8.

Still, the identity, motive and information on the murderer remain unresolved – for a month – the longest in the history of both the Onmitsukido and 2nd Division. The layers of reports Soi Fon forces herself to dig through dust the tips of her fingers, while her Lieutenant informs her, on a daily basis, the officers are searching for the traitor, and that she should stop insisting on personal, and:

"I would advise you again conducting summary executions of our officers when they are returning from missions."

This time, despite her respect for her second-in-command, Soi Fon finds the comment one step too far. Before her Lieutenant can leave, she easily reaches him into Shunpo strides. When he glances back at her in alarm, she fires a finger into his chest and says:

"Don't forget your place, Lieutenant –

"I'm still the Captain. I still give the orders."

But when Soi Fon takes Juri on eight more missions to identify potential suspects, she keeps them mostly surveillance-related. Five times they travel to the human realm to observe Onmitsukido officers observe other division officers in action. Twice they witness their own men and women fall to an ambush of criminals hollows and Menos. And when Soi Fon sees the bloodshed, her hands flirt around with the hilt of her sword, dabbing the frayed leather with intent, even while her Lieutenant's response to her declaration of Captainship knocks around in her head.

"Then you should act like it, Captain."

He shakes himself from her grasp, and eyes her carefully, saying:

"There's one suspect you haven't considered in your investigation. Do I even need to remind you that to exclude her would be a breach of procedure?"

Her mind does not need reminding. Instead, she reminds herself how she had been taught that discord between a Captain and her men are both fatal signs of a Captain's personal weakness and her men's inability to take orders. She knows infighting is petty, even though it appears to be a characteristic of 2nd Division officers. She states down her Lieutenant, not willing to soften the crest of her frown, then her voice almost shatters:

"Leave the investigation to me and Juri. I need you to motivate my men. I'll be grateful if you can do that, Lieutenant."

This is not the time for the trust between us to decay, she tells herself. She meditates on this while deftly unclenching and tightening her recovering hand. Bandages gone, her knuckles hiss with force as she cracks them. Nothing but a dark thread of dried skin remains of the wound. The cost: one month of non-combat. Reasonable, she believes, and with her left hand she mutely slips tea from the porcelain cup into her mouth while Juri pours.

Soi Fon knows she and Juri have been passing in and out of the Rokugai and make their stopovers at the restaurant so often that patrons no longer shower them with stares. Twelve times in one month, Soi Fon counts. Their frequency reminds her of the days with her sempai – only their visits now are a lot less talkative. For moments on end, after missions, they sit facing each other, her chin serenely roosting on her peak of her right hand, the pot of tea in the middle acting as the fulcrum between their pouring hands.

She thinks Juri, the recommended bodyguard who she once dismissed as just another fresh fish, is progressing so well she might be vulnerable to being made a seated officer in the 2nd Division. It has been one month, Soi Fon notes grimly, and she has a total of 15 missions to her credit, including those done with other companies within the Onmitsukido. It is an impressive record. A record which makes all the other seated officers mumble beneath the neutral cover of their mouthpieces – the Captain has a new pet/ they make an adorable couple/ the Captain is following the previous Captain's footsteps –

To which her Lieutenant puts things simply: "You take too much upon herself."

"Do you think I'm acting as if the entire Division depended on me?" she imagines herself openly asking her subordinate, the question breaching the border of her own sincerity and her need to know.

Instead she does not, and as Juri puts down her cup, Soi Fon sees the desolate dregs of bitter tea, the almost invisible blemish of tea left by her lips at the rim. She follows the bark-coloured hands, darkened from missions outdoors – up to the squared shoulders, and to Juri's pensive face. A cloud of hair gathers on her forehead, spilling from the band which streams her hair into an taut ponytail.

Soi Fon almost wants to tell Juri: "If you had purple hair, you would look a lot like –"

But when Juri catches her looking, Soi Fon drains her cup, her fingers twirling it along it sides. She sets it down and says:

"Drink up. Let's go."

And she tells herself it is not good to think these things.

Nonetheless, when she returns to her office, she finds the doorknobs slick with a viscous tongue of what she thinks is glue. She readies her blade, forces open the doors and stops, her feet wallowing in the pyramid of semi-light leaking from her window. And there on her chair, hangs her own Shinigami Captain's uniform, the logo of the 2nd Division untouched by shadow. It sleeves are jagged with, definitely, blood. A dagger weighs down the collars, like a short stubble of a tie.

She nears, and there is enough failing light to reveal the words – HAVING FUN WITH THAT LITTLE WHORE OF YOURS? FORGOTTEN ABOUT ME ALREADY? – curling across her table like a doctrinal truth.

"When will you stop hiding?" she yells to the room, and to the ornamental blood-cradled warning, and to the long legs of light stretching from her windows. "Why don't you just say it to my face?"

But when the silence assumes control of the room she says again:

"If you really are Yoruichi-sama, why are you doing this to me?

"Why?"


9.

She does not receive any answer.

In the interval of her own doubt and her own finding out, she enters the human realm again: 2nd Division is requested to offer reconnaissance and forward support for an ambush on a planned Menos stronghold. Soi Fon sends several of her best officers ahead, including Juri and her Lieutenant, both of whom she knows will follow her orders down to the last syllable. When she passes through the portal, escorted by full-ranked Onmitsukido, she finds herself at the rearguard, at a hill overlooking an industrial complex, cradled in the valley below, flanked to the right by the coast and a vomit-yellow beach. Officers from the 4th Division wait for their services beside a fence, fringed with barbed wire.

"Shall we go a little closer to the action?" Soi Fon asks, and she speeds up her feet, vaulting over the fence. Her officers follow.

The first thing that hits her is the stench. Humans and their attempts at playing god, she thinks. Columns, like chimneys, peer out from the night fog, their peaks like stationary stars blinking low. She crosses a forlorn scene of a battle – Shimigami medics tending to the wounded, blood scattered on the dark road, an officer missing an arm – but her team is travelling so fast no one even notices them.

Spiritual pressure builds, intensifies – but in the tangle of elliptical tanks, iron-like bulwarks and a multitude of silver pipes sprouting from these structures like roots at right angles, she cannot pinpoint the exact location of the fighting. The surroundings have a life of their own, with steam, rasping noises and lights all stretching her senses into wariness.

"Keep moving!" she calls her two officers.

She cuts through the veins of the refineries, dodging the oval shapes with names like PROPANE. The background resounds with a static pulse, the occasional distant shout of orders, and the crunch of her feet on gravel, which to her sounds like the sifting of rice grains on wood. She stops behind signboard, the fence rimming the compound visible beyond another rise. As her officers recover from their sprint, she produces a hand to shush them.

There it is, she concludes. She cannot see properly in the miserable light – the repetitive outburst of red light from the top of the nearest smokestack first reddens and then recedes – but she can hear fighting. A muffled blow, the shriek of ripped fabric, more footsteps crouched in gravel, and then – quiet.

In the midst of the silence, Soi Fon hears the universal call to regroup, like a severe anticlimax: "All units: regroup at the portal. Mission accomplished."

She tries to hope that Juri is all right, but she finds such worrying perpetually immature and unprofessional. She settles for running her vision through the red-washed scene in front of her. She finds it unusual, though, that the spiritual pressure is not dissipating like it should because –

"Captain! To your left!"

She eyes dart in the direction of her officer's warning; they scour towards the fence – there a figure bleached into shadow by the glaring red light appears to be waiting patiently on the outer side, clearly watching them.

"Cover me," she commands, draws her blade and moves so fast her words are meshed into a crackling of feet and gravel.

It takes several seconds, the surroundings becoming inconsistent, her target looming into greater detail as she nears – but she notices the face – and she leans the muscles to a halt, not before pushing her blade through the patterned gaps in the fence –

"You must be Special Forces. One moment you were there, and now I've barely stopped you from killing me."

"Stop playing dumb, you traitor."

The dusty dark shadow has long parted, and Soi Fon's other hand snakes its way into the gap to wrench her sword free, but is tapped down by a wooden walking stick. She throws her head upward: her sword, supported by the force of her entire right hand, is clamped down by his. Deadlock.

And the face, she imagines, a traitor's face – a traitor's smile.

"Come to gather information on us, Urahara?" she demands.

"I'm doing my part to contain those Menos you were fighting in there. Nothing more nothing less." He removes the shaft of his walking stick and releases Soi Fon's blade. He shakes with a chuckle or a suppressed sneer, his absurd bucket hat teetering on the edge of his head. "You cannot kill me for loitering with intent."

He fixes a tight, unflattering smile to his face, a crescent under the rim of his hat, but she thinks it is meek attempt at goodwill. She calculates that a solid slash will part the metal fence, and surprise him enough for her to finish him off.

"You must be Yoruichi's pupil –"

Now – this time an upward swing rips the fence into an opening like a fresh wound. Parted like a curtain, it crumbles around them. Soi Fon sees the traitor's eyes brim with shock. But when she brings her blade down she is met by a reverse end of his walking stick, piling the sharp end of her blade into the earth. She levels her fist into a punch – but he catches it, the absorbed strength making his arm muscles shudder –

They are locked in that position, but just before Soi Fon can fire her left knee into his chin, he warns:

"I'm not here to fight. I'm here to see how you're faring."

"Stop contradicting yourself!" she spits, but his words sink into her like dead-weight. "So it's you! You –"

"She would like to meet."

The words cause her to drop her stance, unfasten her blade. In response, Urahara removes his walking stick. I cannot trust him, she thinks. Sure enough, he raises his stick to cover his chest as she flexes the outward point of her right ankle, readying it for a strike.

"And how would I know you're telling the truth?"

In a display of sub-satisfied nonchalance, he turns his back on her, but not before saying: "She'll tell you herself."

For a second, she contemplates decking him with a strike across his shoulders. But sensing her officers watching nearby, she merely slackens her hands and retrieves her blade. By the time she looks up, he is gone. And the world returns to the numbing flashing of poisoned light, her feet entombed with gravel pieces from her rapid movements.

"Captain, should we follow him?" one of her officers asks, swords ready.

She closes her grip on her blade, noticing no blood where Urahara had held it. She allows herself to exhale audibly – perhaps too audibly – as a sign of frustration.

"No, let him go." Then she adds with a swing in her tone laced with semi-apathy: "He's not the one we want. Just another criminal."

She tries to turn back, thinking she should find where Juri, and her Lieutenant, and the rest of the division. But Urahara's lack of presence bothers her: the slightly cocky smile, the brush of his walking stick (as dangerous as a Zanpakuto), the casual, staggering twist to his words – all these things. His truth, she feels, is as unnerving as his pretense.

As she walks, she spills gravel all over her feet. Her head is hurting, and only then when she brushes through her hair and pricks her finger, does she notices the coil of barbed wire twirled her to temples like a crown.


18.05.2009 (1st Edit), 20.05.2009 (2nd Edit)

Additional Notes: For the sake of character & plot development, I'll have to come up with an additional, final chapter.

Also, apologies to Yorusoi for the barbed wire motif. It was not planned, but it seemed a natural conclusion to the chapter. Still, the chief images/ motifs in my story are as the main title suggests: furniture.

Summary has also been edited for clarity.

Next chapter will be written by 26-27 May 09. Present-tense all the way.

Oh yes: reviews are very much appreciated. Thanks to all who have such kind comments so far, really appreciate you taking time off to read a rather complicated fic :)