Chapter 14: The turning point timeskip
Summary: In which we have a training montage, a time skip and finally have the turning point of Calla's time in the genin corps.
Observation training was… not going so well. She could read body language and facial expressions – but she didn't really have a great memory for how many people were carrying a bag, what the colour of the shop awning was, what was written on the restaurant as their special, or what shirt the loud-mouthed civilian kid wore.
But she tried.
And she was improving, but it was slow progress. Remembering Hermione's instructions on mindscapes and occlumency helped. Although her mind was protected, it certainly wasn't organised. Organisation helped her recall, but it was far from perfect.
Tobirama had also lectured her on timekeeping – making sure her mind always counted internally so she would have accurate tracking of time if she was ever abducted and could be more aware for planning and tracking her guard detail.
Calla didn't know whether these lessons had been struck from the curriculum or if they had felt safe enough once the village was built that it remained a remnant of the warring clans era they'd forgotten about.
The latter skill, at least, was one she didn't need much instruction on, being familiar with hours in the dark of the Dursley cupboard, counting seconds and minutes until she would next be let out. Naturally, the Dursleys never held their own promises (three days, no food, easily turned into four or, sometimes, two if they needed her to help clean-up for guests). Toilet breaks were given but intermittently and more when they remembered her, rather than on a schedule, so not a great help in tracking. Keeping time internally had been a skill she'd learned but forgotten in the interim; but luckily it was far faster and easier to acquire.
Tobirama was finally starting to be satisfied with her chakra control now that she could expel her chakra through most tenketsu over her body and had learned to rotate the leaves as well as keep it up throughout the day. The amount of chakra used was usually easily regained through making sure she kept herself fed and trained her body over the day.
But chakra reinforcement was still a long way away. It wasn't Tobirama's fault – if anything he was the best out of the hokage. He had experience being a genius and dumbing his lessons down for students (and brothers) and handling kinaesthetic learners (his brother and Calla pretty much embodied what that meant).
To be fair, she had tried Hashirama, too, thinking as a fellow kinaesthetic learner, he would have a much better idea of her struggles (Tobirama had a smug smirk on his lips as he watched her call on his brother, and, boy, did she ever understand why afterwards).
"It just goes where you need it and if you need to block an attack with your arm you just focus it there and POW!"
She had also tried Minato but it was obvious the man had only ever had to teach other prodigies. He was very kind about it, but he didn't have a clue how to tell her information.
"Easiest way for you is probably to make sure your chakra spins slightly faster, at around thirty rotations per second, use a more physical focus for physical attacks and spiritual for elemental attacks at a ratio of around 70/30 split, coat muscles and bones as priority, so even if the attack splits skin, you are not incapacitated."
Sounded easy – but Calla didn't even know how her chakra rotated, she only just figured out how to make an object rotate with her chakra, she didn't know it had a natural spin (maybe it had been more difficult because she directed it against natural grain? Who knew!) or how to split her chakra into ratios.
What the hell had these people been eating? Calla felt dumb as a brick and felt like she was surrounded by geniuses; it had to be something in the food to be so prevalent, right? This was insane.
Tobirama had just watched with an air of self-satisfaction as he watched his brother and his successor flounder in teaching her and the little Master of Death turn back to him.
"You are doing well," Tobirama conceded, "you have other powers which you needed to learn to control and separate, and you were not born with chakra, it is wholly unfamiliar to you. To come as far as you have in as little as two years, is not to be underestimated. Stop comparing yourself, you are not doing as well as others your age, but you are far beyond any other two-year-old in the Elemental Nations," he finished with another smirk in her direction, making her laugh.
He was like Draco, smug and taunting but understanding that she needed challenges sometimes to get her to improve while simultaneously reprimanding her for her need for validation and comparing herself. Tobirama himself was brilliant at multi-tasking, and he was teaching her to be as well.
Calla made a huge leap forward with chakra reinforcement when Tobirama forced her to run full pelt at trees until she learned how to stop the bruises after her first broken bone by tree (not her first broken bone altogether – that honour belonged to Dudley who had managed in a three-year-old temper tantrum to throw her down the stairs).
It was different to expelling chakra for leaves and not the way magic was normally used. This was all internal, integrating with blood, bone and skin, but she hadn't understood how to do it until now.
As soon as Calla got a hang of the concept, life got a million times easier. Runs across the village took less than half the time, and she could hit harder and faster than before (and take more of a beating from her friends before calling it quits).
It was the difference between seeing a picture of a painting and standing in front of it.
Her entire world had changed.
There also may or may not have been a few hours where she just bounced from the ground up. Although they had technically merely been successive jumps but with chakra feathering her landing and improving the height of her leap, it felt a lot more like a bounce. It was like being a bouncing ball, or on a trampoline – or a kangaroo; it was the most fun she had had yet and once the kids she was babysitting were a little older, nothing and no one could stop her from introducing them to the pleasure of bouncing through town. She was looking forward to them.
But it meant they could finally move on – she had the basics down; tree-walking and water-walking had been easy after all the other chakra control training, but it was added as another thing to make missions more interesting – walking on walls, attempting to control liquids when dishwashing or painting, making sure papers for delivery adhered to her and many more little tricks to keep training in what would otherwise be classed as wasted time.
"Alright, people usually create giant water dragons, but you can start with small ones the size of your hand – they'll need a lot less chakra but will teach you how to shape fluids and move them quickly in response to attacks – even create multiple ones and control them. It will be a lot more difficult – people always assume you can just create a pincer attack with them, but it is the same issue as doing to different manoeuvres with your hands, such as patting with your right and rubbing with your left," Tobirama demonstrated the skill easily but Calla had already watched Ron attempt it at Hermione's behest after he boasted his own skills, and had no intentions of mimicking and embarrassing herself again.
"It will require your brain to learn how to truly multitask so you can employ multiple attacks. While we still don't know what your element is, but water has responded well enough, so we will start with that and then expand onto other elements from there once you have gotten the hang of it. Your element does nothing but make it easier for you, anyway. You are determined enough, I'm certain we can teach you all the elements as long as you keep at it."
"Hai, sensei," Calla said with a laugh and he rolled his eyes at her, gesturing for her to try with the small bowl of water he'd made her place on her dining table.
It was nice, being able to actually teach Tomo and Yori. She told them about her training during missions and they had both jumped on the idea and put even more suggestions forward on how to implement training; but even better was her teaching them the hand signs for the water dragon and spending an afternoon, soaked in water as they all attempted it and inevitably lost control at some point, splashing each other as dragons dispersed mid-air.
It wasn't fast progress, but it was progress nonetheless, and learning together was also always so much more fun. They took the occasional mission together and both always tried to come up with any babysitting tips they could come up with. Luckily, neither had been jealous of her preferential treatment ("Are you kidding? I'm babysitting my own sisters and if I could, I would never, ever do that again. Why the hell would I want to look over other people's brats? Especially clan ones!"). Just like last time with Hermione and Ron, Calla really lucked out with finding these friends.
And if maybe some protective runes had been hidden in the corners of their home, well, it's not like it would harm them with no one the wiser, right? Calla always looked after and protected her own.
Calla met Ino and, on occasion, babysat all three children together. Gemino had helped her create a clone of the soft toy she'd given Shikamaru to help with his tooth ache and she'd turned it into a seal for Ino.
Tomo had helped her get in touch with a merchant and set up a contract for him to sell the toys; needless to say, they had been a hit everywhere and the merchant had a constant request for more, as far away as Kumo and even for Daimyo's. Calla made sure she created a plethora of creatures – from dogs, cats and rabbits, to rhinos, sharks, whales and owls and everything in between she could think of. But no further deer, seals or wolves – those were taken and would remain unique, as far as Calla was concerned. She put a lot more care into these than the ad-hoc transfiguration she'd done with Shika's deer, so these would all remain permanently. Unless interfered with by another magic user – which luckily was not possible in this world.
The money she got, she funnelled into funds for orphans and people in the red-light district to enter into apprenticeship or give needs-based funding and aid to get people back on their feet. At the moment, she was left with all the administration, but she had plans to entrust the organisation to someone else - as soon as she found someone who was civilian, interested and had a similar moral code. As Calla wasn't really interacting with them, this was naturally part of the problem in finding someone to suit the position and so far she had kept her role in the plush toys secret, so she hadn't advertised for interviews anywhere as it would require them knowing her. She wanted the trust first; it was a catch-22.
She'd also been enlisted for Akimichi restaurants – ostensibly as dishwasher, but in reality she had been asked to show them her recipes, if she agreed.
Funnily enough, they had tried to give her money for remembering how Vernon liked his pies or the potato gratin she had learned to make for the French business partners they'd had over as guests; needless to say, Calla had refused it. She wasn't hard-up, and she couldn't ask for money for something which wasn't hers. Besides, everyone should know how to make pie, no way was she keeping this to herself. But they insisted that she tell them any recipes she knew and help them create new things any Wednesday morning she felt like turning up.
Calla loved baking – and the kitchen in the restaurants were frankly amazing, plus she always got to take things home with her (never say no to free food had been ingrained in her since she was young); so she tried to make sure she could turn up every Wednesday. It was on her file as a recurring mission, whether she turned up or not.
With Tobirama as their teacher (even if neither Tomo nor Yori knew it), their training schedule and lessons conveyed through Calla helped them improve faster and address issues which had started to crop up without proper supervision by a jonin sensei.
Tobirama had also gone on a long rant about what he had intended for the genin corps (not this) which had amused Calla to no end. Really, they were training kids for warfare only and then put them into an administrative position and were surprised everything didn't just work out perfectly? Gasp, no, what a surprise. Note the sarcasm.
The second Kyuubi festival passed before Kurama rejoined her after years of trying to find and reconnect with his siblings. He was grumpy and would talk if she asked him to – but that was because he understood her position on an instinctual level and respected her because of it, rather than actual wanting to talk to her. So, Calla tried to make sure she didn't abuse her power over him and allowed him to talk to her when he wished to, rather than forcing the issue by asking him questions.
It … worked. Of sorts. It wasn't a friendship, but at least there was mutual respect and Kurama seemed to be brooding and working through things in his mind still, and Calla knew better than to interrupt him before he was ready.
But it all came to a head when there was talk of a treaty with Kumo and foreign ninja turned up shortly after what would have been Christmas in her world (just like last year, Shikamaru, Choji and Ino would have presents in the morning, even if they didn't know why).
Kurama had been exploring Konoha's every little corner and crevice for the last few days, so when he jumped through the wall into the apartment late at night, and told her one of the foreign ninja was in a clan compound of the other dojutsu, Calla didn't hesitate and, still clad in her dog onesie, apparated herself across town and just in time to appear in front of a dark-clad shinobi; the moment she registered a child's soul the stupefy left her and hit him. She hadn't been expecting to appear right in front of him – or for him to try and kidnap a child.
And although he was a highly skilled jonin, he had been caught by surprise and the minute shift in movement as he grabbed for his kunai to no doubt slice her throat, plus that her stupefy was magic and therefore didn't require any hand signs, meant he hadn't had time to react to her.
Potter luck came in handy, as it always did when it wasn't pushing her head-first into bad situations.
The bag was easily gotten rid off and inside was a tiny girl, black-haired and white-eyed, shaking and silent tears running down her face.
"Shh, hey sweetheart, everything will be okay now, alright? You're safe. No one else will get to you. I've got you, you're safe, okay, everything will be fine, shh," Calla hit the man with another stupefy to be safe – she had yet to test it on people with chakra to see if they were more resistant, so better safe than sorry. Then she put her babysitting alert charm on the little girl and created a sparkling bunny out of light, and it worked like the charm it was – the way it always had with Teddy.
Tears dried as the little girl's mouth opened and she stared at the little bunny hoping and gently sniffing her tiny hands.
"See? It's all going to be okay," thank god for the distractibility of children, Calla thought, watching the little girl be enamoured with the bunny hopping along her arm.
And brilliant - she was still in her dog onesie. The one which no one was meant to see her in. Just awesome and just her luck. Stupid Potter luck, nothing ever went perfectly smoothly, there was always something.
Now, where the fuck was the patrol? And the back up?
For that matter, what should she tell them?
Author's Notes:
Yep, still on holiday, but here's a short chapter.
I also uploaded a Shikaku/Adult Calla fanfic this morning for anyone who is interested.
Voting for pairing for this fanfic is still on but as mentioned comments which only contain the pairing name will no longer be counted :) I'll get an updated count to you by the next chapter once I have caught up with all the reviews. If you are interested only in voting, you can do so at the top of my profile.
Next up will be interlude with Tomo and more Choza & Shikaku.
And then we will continue with our turning point - I already have a plan about where Calla goes from here but curious to see what you all think and your ideas. She will be taken to T&I while they sort things out at least.
And thanks to QueenCarlton for reminding me that Gemino does work on duplicating already existing spellwork; et voila, income from teething toys.