Chapter 8: Life at the bottom of the totem pole

Summary: In which Calla fails abysmally and is punished for not intervening, misses having friends and learns about her glorious new life as Konoha's soldier, off rescuing princesses and saving the world. Not. Oh, and she finds out Aunt Petunia lied (again).

Calla had her own clothes! And gloves, finally. Until now she'd had to use rags and bandages, on the rare occasion she could get a hold of some, to wrap around her hands and hide the scars inflicted by Umbridge's blood quill. There was just no way to explain that away as anything but deliberate torture – but the difficulty was in explaining what looked like deliberate writing in code as English was not a language they had in the Elemental Nations.

But no more! Calla had bought ten pairs of gloves, most of them fingerless, whereas two were designed for colder weather in case she needed to travel further afield for a mission. But it was so nice not having to constantly check if the scars were still hidden and retighten her knots. So, so nice. It had been difficult trying to find material to hide both hands for that time as this way she could at least explain it away as protection; one bandage would have incited curiosity, two, however, were not too uncommon a sight.

And clothes. Rationing had been abolished about half a year ago, luckily, so Calla had indulged in filling up her wardrobe with several practical yet comfortable outfits to carry her through. Although it should be worth noting that the cost of comfortable was rather high these days. She hoped prices would normalise in another year or two but at least these should carry her through for a little while unless Calla experienced a sudden growth spurt.

She could practically hear Ron snorting with laughter at the mere suggestion; even Hermione had shot up at some point when they were teenager, but Calla remained at her smaller height.

For her first day as a genin, Calla had decided on black trousers made of durable material with extra protection around her thighs (the femoral artery was just too easy a target) and knees. She'd added an extra bandage around her heels to protect it and wore the customary sandals. Her gloves were deep black and reached her wrists. Due to the scars on her arms, Calla wore only long-sleeved tops over her mesh; this one was dark red in a nod to her previous house at Hogwarts. In an attempt to at least make an effort to bond, she had packed a larger lunch than normal, hoping to share it with her teammates, but her hopes and expectations were low given how her class had ostracised her so far.

Well, it looked like this was going to go well. Not.

Calla had been less than impressed with the sexist policies in Konoha so far. The kunoichi only lessons were a farce. Did the boys not need to know which plants were edible and which were poisonous? Did they not need to know how to pass coded message with words or flowers? And, best of all, would they never have need to pretend to be part of another culture or a civilian and be capable of playing an instrument?

It was such a joke. But she'd refused to say anything. The whole point was to see what it was like going through their system, seeing the world as it was for the people here.

Now they'd divided the class into teams of four; three kids plus their assigned teacher. The issue she had with that was that it wasn't all based on skill or compatibility, but one of the factors was clearly that each group had to have at least one girl. There were no all-girl teams, or two girls to one boy and all male teams.

Such a farce. There was only one team with two girls and that was clearly because they had an extra female in class rather than any other criteria, because they couldn't have chosen a worse team to put that girl on.

Yep, Calla's own team was the two-girl-and-one-boy-team. Aki Tanaka and Manzo Ota were her teammates.

Aki was only ten years old and already convinced she was the best in class, despite her grades showing otherwise. Not that the grades were a true reflection of skill, but still while Aki was going well in kunoichi classes, she lagged behind in everything else. But that was propaganda at work for you, making the girls think they didn't need to be competent in taijutsu or anything else.

Of course, in the aftermath of the Kyubi attack, Aki had been assigned to help out her aunt who was a civilian tailor. With the destruction of part of Konoha, also came the lack of clothing – for everyone, babies and children right through to adults. Several tailors and housewives had gotten together to make sure people had clothes and received the more durable material to make clothes for Konoha's shinobi. Most people who normally crafted shinobi clothing had been either recalled or reassigned to weapons.

And Aki had been responsible for helping with the measurements for the shinobi coming to the shop and she had bragged about since, that they already saw her as one of their own. Personally, Calla thought it was rather more likely that as a child, few had seen her as a threat, especially given the way she behaved.

Manzo was tolerable. He reminded her a little bit of George, after Fred had died. The boy liked pranks on occasion but was altogether a rather responsible child. Part of it probably stemmed from his Academy assignment – he had helped out in the hospital after the Kyubi attack, and the reality of what being a shinobi was had probably been a rather stark realisation. To be honest, Calla was rather surprised any child would stick with the profession once they were confronted with such a realisation. But Manzo maintained his jokes and pranks yet knew when it was time to take matters seriously. It had taken George and Fred far longer to realise, but Calla thought it was part of living in this world with its constant death.

Despite that, their team was not a good match. Aki overestimated herself and lacked in any physical confrontation and her weapon skills were subpar as well. Manzo, on the other hand, had a clear view of where he stood and an impressive amount of honesty in his self-evaluation. He made a great trapper judging by his pranks, but he was not suited for hand-to-hand combat. The boy was built for speed, something which could be used in a fight, expect Manzo was a slow thinker and hesitated in acting. It would need a lot of training to retrain him.

And Calla had not grown up in a nurturing household; her body was definitely not made to sustain fights. Having grown up with less than adequate meals, which continued for months during her puberty (plus that time on the run) meant her bones were weak and snapped easily, she was smaller for her height than she should be and bruised easily. Her magic, luckily, fought off most illnesses so that was something she didn't have to worry about at least.

Luckily, any permanent organ damage she may have obtained during her childhood had been negated by Fawkes' tears back in second year when she'd been bitten by the Basilisk. And as soon as she'd been of age, Calla had had her eyes healed (no more glasses, ever again!). The potion could impede growth, so it had been firmly impressed on her that she really should wait longer. But Calla hadn't grown any taller since she was fifteen and even if she would have, being able to see was so, so worth losing any extra inch she could have possible gained.

Point was, her body was definitely not made for prolonged taijutsu. Which meant they had three children, none of whom could be the first line of defence. All three were perfect for staying in the back and attacking from afar if it came to a confrontation. And while, yes, they certainly could be turned into an infiltration team, there was the issue of needing to plan for the worst outcome and be able to deal with issues such as if they were found out. So yes, not ideal.

Additionally, the team wouldn't work well together. Manzo and Aki had, apparently, clashed in their first year over a prank with insects from what she'd heard. Aki had apparently called him useless and said he'd never amount to anything. Manzo had been bullied for a few months afterwards until he'd figured out how to shut down his bullies (better than she ever had). But he still viewed Aki as the beginning of all his torment whereas Aki was outraged he hadn't apologised and didn't understand how he'd graduated. And, well, Aki hated Calla because she wasn't a timid girl who would submit to her elder / superior's advice and Manzo didn't like that she had evaded all of his pranks so far and had done better than him in the class despite being, supposedly, younger.

Calla couldn't really see her team working well on any level so she was curious to see what their sensei had planned for them. According to Abe-sensei, they had been assigned Satoshi Aburame, which was rather unexpected. Assigning a jonin from a clan to a group of non-clan genins was rare; they must have seen something Calla hadn't if they put that much faith in them.

As it turned out, it was not faith in them, but rather faith in their failure. Aburame-san was someone Manzo had heard of before – he was apparently a great tracker and had been one of the many sent after Orochimaru. He was someone Konoha really couldn't afford to put on the sidelines for however many years it took to get orphans and civilian-born genin through the chunin exams. So, the expectation had really been that they would fail.

And, boy, did they ever deliver. Calla couldn't even argue that it was unfair. Hers was the first class since the Kyubi attack where Konoha wasn't so pressed for manpower anymore that any and all teams made it through. Rather, once they proved the had the adequate skills to pass the Academy exams, they needed to prove to their teacher that they were ready to be a representative of Konoha and mature enough to handle the obligations and duties they would soon be asked to perform.

Manzo was the only one who had impressed their teacher – at first at least. The boy had been clever enough to apologise to Aki and Calla and extend the hand of friendship. That maturity, unfortunately, had quickly taken a backseat when Aki had insisted that it wasn't fair for him to pretend to be the mature one when she was clearly so much more mature than him, and she instead insisted on apologising to him and extending the seal of reconciliation for him to complete.

Needless to say, it had ended with the two of them bickering about who was more mature. Calla had sat on the sidelines, watching the children squabble with amusement and wondering when their sensei would intervene. Turns out her policy of non-intervention had come back to bite her.

And he had finally interrupted, by telling them they weren't even mature enough to wait and hear about the test, they certainly were not ready to take orders without question and cooperate with their fellow shinobi regardless of any personal issues. Aburame-san had called her out for not intervening, for standing by and neither helping in the mission – or even getting the mission, nor mediating or calling them to task. So, while her two classmates had at least made attempts, Calla had failed across the board by doing nothing.

Manzo-kun, Aburame-san insisted, would do well taking the graduation exam in another half a year once he learned to calm his temper. Aki-chan needed to learn humility and maturity, both of which kind of went hand in hand. Plus, she definitely needed to learn to respect her comrades – her high-pitched wail and rapid scrambling backwards when exposed to Aburame-san's insects had definitely not aided her attempts to impress their teacher. Calla, however, he had said should join the genin corps and she was not permitted to go back to the Academy. Her first strike had been pretending to be mute, according to him. Her second one the omission of her real age. And her final strike was standing by and abandoning all pretence of teamwork.

Hermione and Ron would have laughed themselves sick, Calla had to admit wryly. Her luck always had been there to catch her out in ways she least expected. Well, at least she definitely wouldn't be getting a big head. Going from being hailed a prodigy or genius to being put into the place where careers go to die was quite a big blow, especially considering the power she theoretically held, not that they knew about that, but still.

Calla would have to report to the genin corps in two days. It was times like these, she really missed having friends.

Sprawling across Ginny's lap to whinge and get the redhead to suggest awesome retaliatory hexes; or dragging Hermione away from the library to lounge around in the sunshine by the lake and getting to play with that beautiful curly hair. Nope, she wasn't envious at all. Okay, maybe a tiny bit. Calla's was just always a mess, no matter what she did, whereas Hermione's was plain amazing. Or convincing Ron to abandon homework and join her on flights around the castle grounds. Although convincing was overstating it a bit; Ron was convinced the moment she picked up her broom, without even saying a word; anything was better than homework!

But the children around her were either adorable or annoying, nowhere in between. Calla just couldn't bring herself to see them as anything but younger than herself and saw their relationships as inherently unequal. How could you build a friendship out of that? For her to have a chance at a genuine friendship, she'd need to be able to see them as equals and so far that just hadn't been the case.

… But it was lonely. Too often, she spent times doing her duties as Death because it allowed her to watch happy couples and families and imagine what they would be like with a tiny baby… what her parents had been like.

It wasn't healthy and by now Calla was missing any kind of positive touch in her life, but she didn't want to rely on the ghosts she frequently called on for training for this either. Unlike with anyone else, ghosts were able to physically interact with Calla – but no one else. They would never be like Peeves, no matter how many years they spent in this world they would never gain substance or the ability to interact with the physical world in any way except through her; but, luckily, they were not able to harm her. Being strangled to death by a person no one else could see did not sound like a fun way to die.

… not that it had anything to do with luck, of course. They were rules Calla herself had put in place; only unlike most rules, these could not be broken. Rules made by her in her position as Death over something she had dominion of – the death – were part of this entire dimension, a law of the universe, an incontrovertible fact.

Maybe it was good that she had been put in the genin corps; no one, herself included, should have this kind of power, a kind of reality check may be good thing; Calla had always been more than aware of the many parallels between herself and Tom, the many, many times where she had stood at a crossroads and nearly chosen a path which would've made her more like him.

It had been one of the many reasons, but one she had never shared, that Calla had walked into that forest that day, knowing she would die. Because as she grew older, it was harder not to see the injustices, the hardships and pressure unfairly put on them, where it wasn't easier to see the path of less resistance as the easier, no, more than that, the better path. And she never wanted to grow old enough to see herself become like him. Hermione always said she wouldn't but Calla didn't have the same trust in herself that her best friend had. And death was easier than watching her friends become her enemies.

Yes, Calla would do her best to do well in the genin corps. There must still be ways to become a chunin and jonin even from the genin corps. Yes, the most important thing was always to walk into a new job with a positive outlook, she remembered Aunt Petunia coaching Dudley when he'd tried his hand at a summer job.

It turned out, Aunt Petunia had lied.

It shouldn't have been such a surprise, but the genin corps was everything she was expecting and ten times worse.

"Good morning, all. My name is Yuudai Sakai, I am a jonin and the head of the genin corps," he tapped his peg leg meaningfully, making it clear what had relegated him to a largely administrative role. The man had brown hair, common to Fire country, and deep set blue-green eyes. Apart from his missing leg, he was missing two fingers on the same left side of his body and had a scar stretching from his mouth across his jaw to his neck.

For new graduates, he made a frightening impression, Calla was certain, but he still had nothing on Mad-eye Moody.

"You may call me Sakai-san. Now, you are either here because you are too old to get sent back to the Academy, or because you need the money and cannot wait another six months until the next graduation exam or you belong to the third category. Students whose teachers do not believe they will make it to chunin and who are sent here – either after years in a team or directly after the Academy," Sakai-san glanced at the assembled thirty children in front of him, all of varying ages, before smiling widely at them; the scar around his mouth distorting it to look more like a grimace.

"The genin corps welcomes all," he intoned sardonically.

There was a momentary pause where children shuffled around, uncertain how to take their superior's comments, before Sakai-san straightened and sent everyone back into a silent, wide-eyed stupor.

"You may be under the impression you can work your way up and become chunin or jonin," another wide grin, "good luck. The only way to be nominated for chunin exams is with the recommendation of both the Hokage and a jonin – which will never happen, in case that was not clear – or the recommendation of three jonin. Without a teacher assigned to you, you will never come before the Hokage unless you really fuck up badly enough – which will not happen under my watch, is that clear?!"

It took a moment to realise what was happening when Calla saw the other children around her freeze, some of them started shaking and only two of them were forcibly relaxed (older ones, Calla gathered, who had been kicked out of their teams). Sakai-san had flooded the room with killing intent. Huh. Now that she was thinking about it, she realised Aburame-san had used a more subtle version of it on them two days ago which was probably part of the reason why Manzo and Aki had felt pressured and acted without thinking.

Clever. Unfortunately, Calla stood out rather obviously now as she had not reacted initially and now was still relaxed, but in her defence killing intent was a lot harder to detect than she initially thought. When she had read about it, Calla had expected it to be something like a dementor. The textbooks had described it as seeing the many varied ways your opponent could – and often would – kill you, feeling afraid, overwhelmed, convincing you that your opponent was superior. For some it could also trigger traumatic memories.

It had all kind of sounded like dementors, paralysing you, making you afraid, taking away all happy thoughts so you couldn't focus on anything but your impending death.

Only, there was a slight flaw in this. Killing intent did not work on a superior opponent, so a chunin trying killing intent on a stronger jonin wouldn't do anything; well, nothing except maybe amuse their opponent by even trying it. And while Calla certainly was no match for Sakai-san physically, even injured as he was, or in any other shinobi skill, she could literally kill him at any point by harvesting his soul. Plus, death was at best an annoyance to her (she had put work into this life, damn it, at going unnoticed! No way would her luck allow it to go this smoothly a second time – she refused to die! Categorically refused it, no way, no how). So while killing intent could have, maybe, called forth traumatic memories, especially considering how many people had tried over the years to kill or harm her, her world didn't have killing intent and there was simply no association to build on.

Calla felt a slight pressure, but more the same kind she'd always felt in potion class with Snape glaring at the back of her, daring her to make a mistake (or breathe too loud, depending on the mood he was in). Ironically, the familiarity of the feeling in a world where she felt kind of adrift, was actually comforting. Oh well, she'd try harder to blend in next time; this couldn't possibly be such a big deal. Some of the older ones barely showed any reaction either. It was fine.

The students scrambled to agree with Sakai-san and he nodded firmly, letting the killing intent drop off and the genin promptly relaxed and shook themselves out to get rid of the remaining fear.

"Good. Remember that. Your other options is getting three jonin to nominate you. The very first obstacle here is even knowing three jonin who are not family. Secondly, you would need to convince them to nominate you. In case that wasn't clear, if a jonin nominates you it means they are staking their reputation on you. Your actions will reflect on them, positively or negatively depending on how well you perform in the chunin exams, and therefore on their skills at analysis, estimation and as a leader," Sakai-san gave them another wicked grin.

"You are more likely to find a Hyuga tapdancing naked in front of the Hokage tower than you are to get a recommendation, never mind obtaining three, understood?"

The genin in the room looked disgruntled and upset but had learned their lesson, nodding hastily in agreement with Sakai-san when he paused rather than get hit with another blast of killing intent.

"Alright. Now, you probably never read through the contract you signed when you joined the Academy, but here's the quick and dirty version of it: it's not free. The government pays for your education, teachers and materials. In return, you owe them. You pay it off by doing missions. You are bound to complete three missions per day, the rest of the time is yours – whether you use that to train, work or do further missions is up to you. If you are doing E-rank missions only, you will need 5 years work to pay back for your education. That's about 4,422 E-rank missions. Depending on the mission rank this will go down dramatically."

Calla was amused to note how surprised a lot of the genin looked.

"Of course, late joiners will have already repaid their loan in part. I will invite you sometime next week and we'll look at your mission record and work out how much is left to pay off. Once you have all paid it off, you may leave the genin corps, or you can stay here. After you have paid off your debt, you are only obligated to pay normal taxes and your mission pay will therefore increase across all ranks," Sakai finished, nodding to the older genin in acknowledgement before turning his focus on all of them.

"You will be on a rotational shift. Mission availability is different depending on the time of day and the genin corps must be available at all times. If you've got exceptional circumstances for why you cannot take certain shift, for example at night, you may arrange a time to talk with me. And you had better make sure it fits the criteria set out in the handbook, before talking to me or you will regret it," followed by another short burst of killing intent from Sakai-san, dissipating almost immediately, as he continued on.

"They will have told you at the Academy about D-rank missions you would take as a graduated jonin. If you were in a team, those are missions you take. You are assigned them as a team to train your teamwork, communication, leadership, delegation, diplomacy and any number of other tasks. Genin under a jonin sensei are the faces of Konoha, the ones the clients and civilians and interact with. That is not you," Sakai-san emphasised.

"You are the genin corps. You take E-rank missions and once you prove yourself competent enough – or if Konoha needs you to – you will take on D-ranks and possibly C-rank missions. C-rank missions will mostly be assigned to several genin corps members and you will form a temporary team. Very few of you will ever be assigned a C-rank mission. Your interactions with civilians will be limited, your interactions with clans practically non-existent apart from a few specific missions."

Sakai-san paused for another moment, but no one dared to ask a question, although the discontent was visible on most faces.

"You will get three weeks of holiday per year – unless Konoha declares an emergency, in which case it may take your holidays from you entirely for however long it takes to resolve the emergency situation; this can take hours or years. You will work 6 days a week, 8 hours per day on a rotational schedule, as I mentioned. The schedule changes each fortnight. It is your obligation to check your new schedule here," the imposing head of the genin corps pointed at the sheets on the wall behind him.

"My office is up on the second floor. You will be assigned tomorrow. Missions, both regular and one-offs, will be posted to the side. Based on your rotation, you may be assigned some missions automatically. You may pick and choose your other missions from the remainder. Remember, you are obligated to complete three missions per day. Once you have selected a mission, go to the mission desk up the stairs in front of my office to make sure your name is allocated to the mission. If all missions are taken, our mission desk may refer you to the Hokage tower where you may choose further missions, if they agree to it. You may only go there after obtaining a slip from our desk stating what missions you are qualified for. If you want a higher ranked mission, you need to request an evaluation. If we feel you are wasting our time by requesting evaluations without improvement, you will need to show evidence of progress before requesting further evaluations."

Sakai-san gave a cold glance across the crowd, voice firm as he continued, "at the moment, each new graduate is qualified for E-ranks only. You were not put on a team; that means you are not qualified for D-ranks until we say you are. Now. Any questions?"

The next twenty minutes were spent with Sakai-san repeating select pieces of information which some of the genin had either already forgotten or hadn't understood.

But, yes, Aunt Petunia definitely lied. No amount of optimism was going to make this situation any better. She'd never make it to chunin if she understood this right. Her missions didn't involve interactions with clans and she needed to somehow get three separate jonin to notice her; how likely was that to happen?

Squeezing her way through the crowd, Calla took a glance at the mission board. Yep, as she thought, definitely not the most glamorous work; it was essentially menial worker tasks at less than minimum wage.

Garbage collector. Garbage disposal. Sewage cleaning. Drainage check and clean. Torture and Interrogation room cleaning. Hospital room cleaning. Bathroom cleaning in, well, basically all official buildings. Aiding with hospital biological waste disposal (dead bodies?). Message runs between departments. Evacuation route check and maintenance. Maintenance of Academy, T&I, and Hokage building. Dishwasher and cooking assistant in the Hospital. Messages between hospital and Hokage tower, declogging toilets in the Academy and a few residential buildings. Messages between the gate and other departments as needed. Herb collecting mission for the hospital.

It was well known Konoha contributed to the payment of D-rank missions, but E-rank missions came from the village. Konoha paid a pittance for each E-rank, and even with completing three a day, it would be difficult to afford a one-room apartment like hers and getting a healthy amount of nutrition would be difficult.

That meant Calla would have to see if she could fit in more than three missions per day – it wouldn't do to draw attention to her lack of concern over money. Time to train would be sparse and she didn't know how other genin would do this; Calla could, at least, call upon ghosts to assist and correct her training. Most of the children around her would have no such option.

There was also no training ground – another hindrance. The Academy training grounds were reserved for students only and genin were punished if they trained there as they potentially knew harmful attacks but were not yet observant or skilled enough to notice intruders. In order to reserve a training ground you had to be either a chunin or jonin; their only choice was to turn up, hope it was unoccupied and that it wasn't booked anytime soon.

Plus, genin under a designated teacher usually looked down on the ones in the corps, which meant you had to not only deal with crappy missions and even worse pay but also the casual disregard from former classmates. Yep, being part of the genin corps was not shaping up to be a picnic.

And of course, as Calla found out the next morning when she checked the board for her schedule, she had been assigned to night shift, starting that night. Her first week she was assigned to the hospital for any emergency messages and as her shift lasted the entire eight hours, presumably she was meant to choose other missions at the designated location. The week after, she was assigned message duty at the Eastern gate but only for three hours.

Right, this was completely doable. Nodding to herself firmly, Calla picked out two suitable missions on the mission board and lined up at the genin corps mission desk up the stairs.

"Name," the bored voice of a pimply-faced teenager sitting bent over the mission desk demanded without even looking up.

"Kara Togei," she answered, watching curiously as he shuffled papers before evidently finding hers.

"Mission?"

"Aa. Disposal of biologically hazardous material and bathroom cleaning. For the week."

That finally made the boy look up.

"Are you sure? I'd recommend trying it first before committing for the whole week, but your choice," he still looked dubious.

Calla was fairly sure in her choices, though. Both were E-rank. She wasn't squeamish, having been exposed to a lot in the Wizarding world's last war and, well, she had a lot of practice cleaning disgusting bathrooms after Dudley had been; especially when he was younger and thought it funny to pee on the wall and leave it for her to clean up. Petunia blamed it on her; which… how? Anyway, it meant she was used to disgusting clean-up and at least it would be one things she wouldn't have to learn.

Once she had figured out how much time doing these tasks took, and how many messages she needed to run each night on average, Calla might be able to add other tasks on. But for the moment, they both seemed like fairly reasonable, easy tasks.

"I am sure."

"It's your reputation on the line," he commented, shrugging. Calla faintly wondered how many missions she'd need to do before he'd tell her his name.

Yeah, glorious this was not. As it turned out biological matters to be disposed wasn't a code for dead bodies – or at least not just that. It also included poisons. The basilisk poison had, luckily, immunised her to anything weaker than it. And, well, there was nothing stronger, not even in this world.

Why lucky, you ask? Well, because apparently there was no need to tell genin corps' newest members about the protective suit hidden in the cupboard outside; and not all the containers are completely clean or securely closed. Nor were all of them contact poisons; two of them had been airborne and Calla instructed to burn them.

Apparently, actual poison destruction was rare; most were kept on hand by staff for shinobi to use. But that was only if Konoha had been able to create a suitable antidote, or if the poison was not one which had come back with one of their ANBU, which Calla gathered was the case her.

Her knowledge of ANBU was scarce and most of it stemmed from what she had gleaned from Minato, actually, rather than the Academy. But ANBU bodies were always burned as their bodies could potentially reveal or give clues to secret missions they had undertaken; it was the same with any poisoned ANBU. Any special poison found was examined by ANBU staff to determine and manufacture antidotes, but the original sample was always destroyed. Nothing was meant to trace back to Konoha, after all, and a unique poison suddenly being used by them would be the equivalent of waving a giant flag in their enemy's path.

Still, the lack of precaution was astounding. How many had seriously suffered due to a failure by hospital staff to take five minutes and induct new members. But alerting staff to their failure would raise questions on why she wasn't having any symptoms. Not alerting them, could make life seriously uncomfortable or even kill other members of the genin corps… Maybe there was a way to make a notation? She'd ask at the mission desk. For the rest of this week, this was her shift anyway.

The hospital operated on skeleton staff at night and Calla was only required to run two messages; both to T&I. Apparently, ANBU returns after hours were relayed to T&I if they were at the hospital so their personnel could inform ANBU and either get the mission details (if they were not expected to survive the night) or to make sure to alert the Hokage in the morning and leave the decision at his discretion.

Calla stayed an extra half hour in the morning, as her replacement was running behind schedule before leaving, yawning to herself. Not even a thanks – not from staff or the genin replacing her. Oh well. Back to her beautiful, wonderful home. Time for penguin onesies, some food, sleep and then onto training tomorrow. Now that she had graduated, she needed to see what else was now accessible for her in the library; apparently, genin corps were more restricted in the books and scrolls they could borrow than genin under a sensei. It kind of made sense – they didn't have anyone to watch over them and rescue them before they did something daft and seriously injured themselves, but it was still frustrating.

Although more things were now available to her in Konoha, it was not as much as she had hoped for.

But she did have a beautiful home. The missions, while certainly not amazing, were partly familiar and otherwise fairly simple and easy to learn. Thanks for her powers, she would not have to miss out on training under jonin supervision, her time would simply be a lot more restricted than it was for most genin.

Life wasn't too bad. She could feed herself, live life as she wished and wasn't going to be sent out to murder people anytime soon. It could be so much worse. After a gratifyingly hot shower, Calla shimmied into the extremely comfortable onesie, and set about preparing a simple meal.

How upset could she really be, she mused, when eating hot food in her own kitchen, in her own brand-new clothes (not Dudley's hand me downs), safe under some of the best runework she had ever created and about to head to her own bed – a brand new bed! And mattress! And hadn't that been a revelation and a half. She never had one in the cupboard and only an old used one with rather suspicious stains once the Dursleys moved her into the second bedroom. Needless to say, Gryffindor tower certainly didn't have new mattresses, nor did the Weasleys or her godfather. She hadn't known they came in different variations of soft and firm (to be perfectly honest, Calla hadn't even known mattresses could be firm!).

This wasn't so bad. Now she just needed to start actually reaching out and talking to people.

Meh. A project for future-Calla. Now-Calla was just looking forward to creating a pillow and duvet heaven on her bed to hide away in and sleep for several hours.

Author's Notes:

Okay, votes were overwhelmingly for the genin corps with only 2 votes for Root, 6 for a team and 16 for the genin corps. So here we are.I hope you are happy with how I wrote the genin corps. There is no or little information about it. But I figured there are so many things which need taken care of in a village which are never mentioned, so hence E-Ranks such as garbage collection and disposal. I hope I haven't disappointed anyone with my ideas on the genin corps as I know some of you had your own ideas on it, but I figured they'd get no funding and no support. Let me know what you think.

Just to let you know, I've put a timeline up on my profile which contains dates, ages etc. Just feel free to check there if you are unsure. I'll update it as I write this :)

As for pairing, votes are currently at
Shisui: 14
Kakashi: 22
Itachi: 30

Votes are ongoing for pairings. The poll is at the very top of my profile page (above the picture and text) if you want to vote there or you can leave a review with your vote.

Also one of my reviewers was asking about what kind of person I would pair up with Shisui / Itachi / Kakashi if they didn't get Calla, so here's my answer:

I think a civilian for Itachi, he loves peace and being clan head could work inside the village; the civilian would have experienced being at the mercy of those more powerful and be a genuinely kind person, who stands up for the downtrodden even against those stronger than her, I think. And I think he likes being the protector and being able to take care of someone.

Shisui would probably be with a Nara, just for fun. Nara super-clever but also so, so lazy and Shisui zooming around them with shunshin like a hyperactive child, who could be serious and clever one moment and full of pranks etc the next. I think the unpredictability and energy would be attractive to a Nara.

Kakashi is harder, so much harder. I think he'd like someone strong. All his loved ones died in the face of stronger adversaries or numbers, so a civilian would be out. They would have to be a very strong jonin with nothing against Naruto, of course and like dogs. I am torn on the other characteristics.
A part of me thinks like a territorial dog, someone who is openly affectionate with a few but aloof with others. The other part of me thinks someone who is very openly and physically affectionate with everyone, either way I think he needs someone not in infiltration, someone who is genuine and honest about who they are, what they want etc. At the moment Kakashi doesn't have any downtime or way to relax except with Gai who has not an ounce of subterfuge. I think it's what he'd need with a partner as well, someone who says honestly what they think and want, no second-guessing, interpreting etc. But yes, Kakashi is the hardest I think, to pair up.

Anyway, love how many of you write long reviews filled with speculation and sharing your thoughts about this fanfic - this update is for you. I wrote in between work and until late at night to get this to you because you were all so invested, complimentary and so, so very infectious with your enthusiasm! So this one's for you!