Disclaimer: Bleach isn't mine, but it sure is fun to write like it is.

Author's note: Just one chapter this time. I thought that I might have to wait a little longer for an update with multiple chapters, but I decided to put this out so that you have something to read while I polish the next chapters. Thanks for the reviews! I really appreciate them.

The Art of Transformation

by siyentista

Chapter 14: Power and Control

"You've gotten better!" Yoruichi shouted enthusiastically as she stood with her arms crossed, surveying the Y-shaped clearing that Soi Fong just made using her shunko.

Soi Fong nodded her thanks since she was too busy taking in much-needed oxygen to speak. She had her hands on her knees, standing bent over in the junction of the Y, where she had just imagined three opponents coming at her from three directions. She smirked, 'Three imaginary opponents decimated in one burst of energy while three equally imaginary comrades escape the attack. Not bad. Not bad at all.'

"We can stop here," Yoruichi called out before flash stepping down to the clearing. "For the next meetings, we'll keep making the patterns more complicated until we've mastered shunko completely."

"Sounds… good," Soi Fong finally managed to say between breaths. She picked up her neatly folded haori from the base of the tree she designated Imaginary Comrade One. It was a testament to her growing control that the cloth was dusty but completely untouched by the blast.

As Soi Fong was busy dusting off the cloth, Yoruichi was engaging in a very lively debate with herself. It was a silent debate, but Soi Fong would not have needed to hear anything had she turned around at that moment. Yoruichi's face flickered from pensive, to doubtful, to longing, then to hesitant, before it finally settled on hopeful.

"Hey Soi, got any time to hang out with me today?" she asked in her usual casual tone.

"Not really," Soi Fong answered, preoccupied with her haori.

"You're leaving for another… appointment," Yoruichi guessed disappointedly, all pretenses of not caring gone.

Soi Fong shrugged the haori on with her back to her mentor. "Yes," she answered simply, though when she turned around, she was taken aback by the defeated look on Yoruichi's face.

'What… Why… ?' pondered a mystified Soi Fong.

"I… ," Soi Fong began. Yoruichi was acting so peculiarly that she was seriously considered skipping the SWA meeting. "Mmmm… I'm sorry, Yoruichi. I really can't."

'Today, we need to fix that whole nickname issue or else our little president is going to get herself murdered in her sleep,' she reasoned.

"I… see," Yoruichi said in a strangled voice.

"Is everything alright?" Soi Fong tried to find out.

"Uh, yeah," Yoruichi replied, obviously not meaning it.

Soi Fong didn't want to leave Yoruichi the way she was, but she didn't know how to deal with the foreign situation and she was running out of time. "Ummm… I have to go right now, but I'll find you later, okay? Maybe around lunch?" she said hurriedly and with much concern.

Yoruichi just nodded.

***

During the meeting, the nickname rule was overturned as Soi Fong had wished, but the whole debate had passed without so much as a peep from the captain. The entire meeting, Soi Fong's mind was on Yoruichi and the hurt look she wore when she left a while ago. She was perplexed and quite unsettled. Yoruichi looked so sad, resigned and so vulnerable. Those were expressions that had no business adorning Yoruichi's beautiful features.

Had she done that? All she said was that she was going to a meeting, just like she had for the past few weeks. All the other times, Yoruichi had reacted indifferently. 'Well, except for that last time,' she thought. 'Last week, Yoruichi sort of complained that I kept leaving for the meeting, but even then she let it go easily.'

Soi Fong didn't think that it mattered so much to Yoruichi. They were friends now, she knew, and Yoruichi seemed to genuinely enjoy her company. This much she could tell because the woman kept visiting the division and inviting her out. But Yoruichi had always been a highly independent person and her aura of nonchalance made Soi Fong think that while she was a friend, she wasn't particularly special to Yoruichi.

It was true that Yoruichi had taken care of her for a week, something she had never done for anyone else. But then that was because she was worse off than everyone else, wasn't it? She had actually needed someone else's help. More importantly, wasn't it because Yoruichi felt guilty that she was the reason she was injured?

Now she wasn't so sure. Perhaps she really had hurt her friend by constantly turning her down. Perhaps she was feeling a little… neglected?

It was difficult to suddenly think of Yoruichi this way—as someone she had the power to actually hurt emotionally rather than someone she had to gain power to impress, defeat, or protect. But if that was the case, then she was determined to apologize and fix things.

***

"Hey there," Soi Fong greeted when she found Yoruichi watching the ant-like shinigami from a hill overlooking the Seireitei.

"Oh, hey," was the dull response.

"Are you okay?" Soi Fong asked as she took a seat beside Yoruichi and joined in looking down.

Yoruichi took a deep breath.

"Do… do you want to talk about what's bothering you?" Soi Fong ventured.

"Well… ," Yoruichi considered, "… not really." She had already lost control of herself earlier when she showed exactly how she felt about Soi Fong seeing Matsumoto. She didn't feel like exposing herself again.

Soi Fong nodded, realizing that she was going to have to bring it up herself. "I'm sorry I've been ditching you to go to the SWA meetings."

Yoruichi glanced at Soi Fong to process what she had just said.

"I really can't afford to miss any of them or else stupid rules get created," Soi Fong continued to explain.

"What? SWA meeting? I thought Matsumoto… and you… and… ." Yoruichi furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, hope growing so quickly in her chest that she thought she might burst.

"Hmm? There's a bunch of us in the association that you know," Soi Fong said, misunderstanding Yoruichi's jumbled words. "Like you said, Matsumoto's there. All the other female lieutenants, Unohana-taichou… Kuchiki too, even if we have the secret meetings in the Kuchiki estate… ," Soi Fong enumerated.

"Last week, Kusajishi-fukutaichou decreed that people should be called by the nicknames she gave them, like Glasses for Ise-fukutaichou. The reason I really had to leave today was because we needed to reverse it," Soi Fong rambled on.

'Nicknames? It was all… a misunderstanding?!' Yoruichi had never felt so happy and relieved about being wrong before.

Stuck in her realization, Yoruichi was so quiet that Soi Fong was beginning to worry that she hadn't been forgiven. "I can bring you next time if you want," she offered.

Yoruichi, on the other hand, was finding out for the first time how it felt to have something you badly coveted suddenly within reach. Overcome with emotion, she grappled a shocked Soi Fong in an awkward but tight embrace from her position beside her.

'I didn't know she wanted to come along so badly,' thought the bewildered Soi Fong even as she blushed brightly.

"Are… are we good now?" Soi Fong asked, shifting a bit so she can rub Yoruichi's back comfortingly.

Yoruichi nodded her head, refusing to let go of the smaller woman.

***

Soi Fong just sat there, waiting for Yoruichi to calm down when a thought popped into her head: 'I am not a warm person.'

Soi Fong was deadly. She was skilled. She was efficient. She was sharp…

She was not warm.

The truth was that in her childhood, she was taught by doctrine and example that emotions were unimportant—unavoidable, yes, but nonetheless unworthy of one's time and consideration. The priority was the mission and the mastery of skills that would allow the completion of the mission. After that, came one's own survival and the acquisition skills that ensured one's survival. Everything else was a trimming that could hinder or at best, be neutrally useless.

Once, Soi Fong had read a text describing how katana were made. "When a blade is being forged, the alloy is pounded on relentlessly. When it has taken shape, it is hardened by dousing its molten core until is as cold as the icy water engulfing it," it had said. Soi Fong couldn't help but liken the process to the crafting of a warrior. She, herself, had undergone harsh training to be as deadly as she was, and her rise as a warrior involved a progressive loss of warmth.

In her adolescence, there had been one person who had dared to dig up the last vestiges of her emotions and warmth. "Cold steel blades may be strong," she had lectured, "but the person who wields it is the one with the power. A weapon is deadly, but only if there is a mind and heart to grant it a purpose, and a hand to lend it movement."

If her words were not enough, Yoruichi showed through her own example that there could be strength in those human attributes; and Soi Fong had to bow to her wisdom for she found that she was indeed fiercer, much more formidable in battle, when she was fighting to protect her revered master. That being said, the sudden abbreviation of her time with Yoruichi had not allowed her coldness to melt completely.

When Yoruichi left, the emotions she was left with were all negative—pain, anger, disappointment, betrayal. But her master was proven correct once again: using those emotions, she had accomplished so much. Unfortunately, those were greedy emotions that left no space for anything else—not the protectiveness that she used to have, not the happiness she used to cherish, and especially not the humor that Yoruichi seemed to value or the warmth she displayed from time to time.

When Yoruichi returned, so did her protectiveness. When she finally protected Yoruichi, she regained some of that happiness and gave in to some of the humor. And now… Now, she was sitting on a hill apologizing and comforting that same person… Was she, Soi Fong, cold assassin, strict captain, finally becoming… warm?

Why did all of the milestones in her life hinge on Yoruichi? And why was it that most of the emotions she had managed to feel ultimately led back to her? Yoruichi was the most important person in her life. That was a clear-cut fact. Young Shaolin Fong would have said that it was because the Princess was her charge. The Keigun recruit would have added that she was her commander and idol. The personal guard of the Onmitsukidou Commander would have reasoned that she was her respected teacher. And now… Now, she was sitting on a hill apologizing and comforting that same person… Yoruichi was more important than ever because she had become her closest friend.

But importance was one thing. People could be important and not be the center of anyone's life. Why then was Yoruichi the center of hers?

Soi Fong gazed at the woman clutching at her haori, Yoruichi's silken hair brushing her cheek in the process. She found that she liked the sensation, and noticed that Yoruichi's weight was pleasant against her side. Idly, she thought that it would be so easy now to just stretch the comforting arm a little farther on Yoruichi's back and to bring the other arm over to encircle the woman.

When she realized where her thoughts had led, Soi Fong stiffened imperceptibly and dropped the comforting arm as discreetly as possible. She had gazed at Yoruichi, seeking the answer to her questions, and she had found it, hadn't she? All of the milestones in her life and most of the emotions she felt involved Yoruichi because to her, Yoruichi was more than a princess, more than an idol, more than her superior or mentor or friend. She didn't know how or when it had happened, but somewhere in the time she had known her, perhaps as far back as her service as a low-ranking member of the Onmitsukidou, she had fallen in love with Yoruichi.

She wasn't as shocked at the realization as she could have been. The hundred-year absence aside, she had always prioritized Yoruichi's happiness and well-being. At the back of her head, she must have known but always ignored it because Yoruichi was a woman. Moreover, she was perfect and unreachable. And now… Now, Soi Fong was sitting on a hill apologizing and comforting that same person… because she had been hurt by the lack of attention… Was Yoruichi still unreachable?