Chapter 2: Broken Pendulum
Decades after Yoruichi had stopped teaching her most talented subordinate and up until her feline form returned to the Seireitei, Soifon had come to be known as the fastest shinigami in Soul Society. She had trained day and night, night and day, fostering the inborn talent to master the skill her captain was known for. There were days when she pushed herself far beyond her expected limits, bringing her legs to the brink of destruction, but the harsh training had paid off. Not only was she fast but her muscles had become so used to the motions that she could execute lightning-fast shunpo out of instinct. At the moment, her calf muscles were twitching, responding to her murderous thoughts, raw instinct driving them into the preparatory stages of a particularly swift step that would bring her within blade's reach of the traitor.
She wanted so much to stick Suzumebachi into Aizen's fragile neck, but her legs and her blade were stilled by the memory of a shinigami's zanpakutou buried in another one's belly, Hinamori's betrayed eyes turning dull, Hitsugaya's aghast expression crumpling into one of pure rage and malice. She could assassinate Aizen only to find the dying form of a comrade. Worse, she could attack him only to realize that she had killed the woman she had sworn to serve and protect.
Yoruichi-sama.
It took some effort before the captain successfully calmed her eager muscles. Even then, the only reason the urge didn't return was because the manipulative monster had disappeared from sight, walking right through the imposing doors of the Twelfth Division. The Chinese woman slumped her shoulders, at a loss for what was going on and what to do next. It was a feeling she was quickly becoming very familiar with since waking up this morning.
She may have deduced that she was the victim of Aizen's deception, but what was she to do with such knowledge? Here in a world where her senses were completely subjugated by Aizen's zanpakutou, she was utterly vulnerable to the maniac's manipulations. How was she to know if her plans weren't actually meant to bring his to fruition?
The petite woman wanted to tear her hair out, somehow re-plant them, and tear them out again.
Truthfully, she couldn't think of what Aizen was trying to achieve by fooling her into thinking she was in the past, especially after he had already revealed that first deception with Hinamori. What, did he think that she hadn't learned her lesson? That she would keep attacking whoever looked like Aizen at the moment, hoping that she would get him at some point, in the meantime hurting whoever he wanted her to?
The most troubling piece of the puzzle was that an illusion of this scale would no doubt be taxing on the reiatsu. In fact, she wouldn't be surprised if this required bankai. What goal was so important that he would use all that energy for such an elaborate set-up? What should she do now?
Soifon clenched her eyelids shut in frustration. Questions, all questions, and not a single answer.
Well, maybe one answer. She was a woman of action, but now seemed to be more a time of inaction. Until she knew what Aizen was trying to pull or unless she found herself in a dire situation, she would have to play along and pretend that she had been fooled.
Soifon furtively glanced around and back the way she came and realized that prior to seeing Kyouka-Suigetsu-Urahara's infuriating face, she had been buried too deep in thought to take in the details of the illusion. Such inattention to her surroundings was deplorable and simply wouldn't do to discover Aizen's plans. Thankfully, Kyouka-Suigetsu-Yoruichi had given her the day off. She had the perfect opportunity to re-explore her surroundings of at least a century ago without blowing her cover.
***
The usually cream-colored walls of the barracks were glowing orange when Soifon returned to the Second Division. The building was on the west end of the grounds, at least half a mile away from the next buildings that were already part of the Third Division; and day after day, the sinking sun painted it in the same colors that it did the sky.
Soifon had a throbbing headache from wandering round the Seireitei, gathering information and unsuccessfully trying to piece them together. For all her efforts, her only accomplishment was determining that the illusion was a faithful replica, including obscure details she could not have recalled on her own but had remembered when faced with the visual prompts. She wanted nothing more than to just lie down to banish the pain, even as she thought that everything—the headache, her bed, and her desire to sleep—might all be part of the illusion. What a mind-fuck, she concluded irritatedly.
Of course, with her current discovery, lying down just had to wait.
When Soifon entered her quarters in the barracks, she noticed a piece of paper, conspicuously placed on her dresser, right at the center of the void uncovered by various personal items. She wasn't in the habit of cluttering that space with paperwork, so the oddness of the situation had her hoping that it was a note of some sort, something akin to a ransom letter after a kidnapping—an explanation of the situation and a detailing of demands.
There's only one way to find out.
Eyes roaming over the first line of ink marks, Soifon's breath caught. By the time she got to the fourth line, her eyes had bugged out and her mind had completely trailed off. She gaped at the piece of paper in horror, even as it fell from her shaking hands.
It was poetry.
Bad poetry.
Interestingly, the horror was not caused by how bad the poetry was, although the sentiments were shockingly juvenile and the words painfully awkward. No, the horror was caused by the fact that everything was as it should be at this particular point in time—embarrassing forays into literature and all. Normally, that would be considered a good thing. However, the Commander of the Onmitsukidou remembered how Aizen explained that Kyouka Suigetsu had the power to make his enemies see what he wants them to see. If that was the case, then the unspoken given was that Kyouka Suigetsu cannot show you things that Aizen cannot conjure up…
Like things he had no way of knowing…
Like how cold Soifon used to be (and still might be) a cheesy sap…
Like how militia-bred Soifon used to secretly write poetry—not just any poetry, but bad poetry…
No one else in the world knew that, not even Yoruichi, and yet there she stood, eying the bad poetry as if it might come to life and gobble her.
Her eyebrows pinched together in distress. This is not the work of Kyouka Suigetsu!
Soifon felt like crying. She had been so convinced that everything she was seeing was an illusion, and while that was bad news, she at least had some grasp of her current situation. Now, she had been deprived of even that small comfort.
What is this? Where am I? What is going on?!
Thinking back to the little pieces of information she had gathered earlier, she determined that her earlier conclusion was probably close to the truth: she was in some approximation of the past. But if it wasn't an illusion, what was it? Reality? Time travel? She would have thought it impossible if not for the fact that she had fought an arrancar that controlled aging, essentially accelerating the passage of time. He was dead, but who knew if anyone else had a similar, more complete control of time?
Soifon pressed the heel of one palm against her forehead. The throbbing was becoming unbearable.
The only good thing about her new realization would have been the fact that she didn't have to keep thinking about what Aizen had in mind. But the one question that had occupied her mind the whole day had been replaced by multiple others: How had she gotten here? Was it a random selection, being placed in this particular point in time, or was there a specific reason? Who had the power to pull off something like this, and why would he or she send someone back? Why send her back?
The more she thought about it, the less hopeful she was that she would ever find out. If the being was powerful enough to send her that far back in time, most likely, the being could ensure that their motives and methods were not discovered unless they wanted her to. The most that she could do was to cry out to the heavens—where someone of that omnipotence was likely to reside—and patiently wait for a lightning bolt or something of that nature as a response.
No, thank you. I've already cried out, 'Why?' to the heavens once, and the goddess didn't even deign to answer me.
No matter. If she was placed before the most critical events in her and the Seireitei's existence with her memories of the future intact, then she had the power to change the course of history, regardless of what the time manipulator wanted. That thought brought a smile to her face despite the pain building behind her skull. To successfully pull it off, she needed to determine the key events that lead to the Winter War and plan ways to manipulate them. But before that, she needed to gather information that would fill in the gaps in her memory.
Oh, how sweet it is to have been trained for Onmitsukidou. A menacing gleam shown in Soifon's eyes as she rubbed her palms together.
Her stomach growled and she realized that she couldn't remember when she last ate… couldn't remember anything else that happened to past Soifon right before she got to this timeline, either, but…
But first, dinner.
Author's notes: Now wasn't that an annoying chapter? In the next chapters, you can expect the headache inducing situation analyses to get toned down, but I can't promise that I'll stop them completely. After all, Soifon is still figuring things out.
Disclaimer: See chapter 1. I'm telling you, Tatsuki MUST have powers!