The training stepped up in intensity. Now that she was officially a member of the Onmitsukido, Soifon began the training in earnest that would prepare her to become the deadliest of assassins.

Speed. Precision. You will only have limited chances to strike.

The young girl took all this to heart. She assessed her strengths and weaknesses daily. Her smaller-built helped with her shunpo, but she was also physically weaker than most of her male colleagues. I will just have to be faster than them, she concluded, but continued to push herself with the strictest of physical regimes. Long after her team had retired for the night, she would still be training.

She found the mealtimes the most tedious. She was withdrawn by nature, and did not know how to relate to her cohort and her seniors socially. She had been so much younger than her brothers and was never close to them. The hearty laughter of the men, the boisterous toasts and the bawdy jokes about other units and the Commander were alien to her. The only women she had some form of contact with were the healers in the Fourth Squad, and even then, she reckoned she did not want to have to be sent there too often. And she was only too glad to escape to the sakura grove to practise with her zanpakuto, once the gong sounded the end of the evening meal.

The younger members of the keigun would tease her occasionally, but she soon gained their respect with a couple of well-placed hakuda moves. Her seniors found her distant, even by keigun standards. As a prank, they deliberately dabbed small amounts of different poisons over her room while she was away. She fell extremely ill, but it was not enough to take her life. When she returned to her unit from the Fourth Squad, she heard that the perpertrators had been punished, not for the malevolence of their deed, but for inflicting it before she could be trained to counter the poisons.

"In the Onmitsukido, you cannot prevent everything, but you can be ready for anything." her unit leader had explained. "Next time, when you have completed your training, you will know what to do even if you should be taken unawares."

After awhile, most of her cohort left her alone. If they ever spoke, it was on the business of the next mission to be undertaken.

She was summoned one day. "You have been chosen to join the Commander-in-Chief's personal bodyguard. You will report to her now!"

Leaving behind her meager belongings, Soifon dashed to the headquarters of the Second Squad.