Hello everyone!

Sorry for going hiatus so long! My school and my work are actually killing me, so... For those who are iterested in what I was actually doing in that time, I'll leave a note in the bottom of the chapter to talk briefly about it.

I have a fuck ton of stories in my head, and no time to write about it. I'm considering using this fiction to experiment with the Microsoft Word app on my phone and see if I can write little chapters when I'm in public transports (I have like 2 to 3 hours of train every weekday to go from my place to work/school).

I hope you enjoy this little chapter!

See ya!

Seventh to ninth month

Well, she couldn't do much already in terms of making a useful network, but she could make the people she already knew to behave like she wanted to. Haruka and Kazehaya were good fetchers every time she accidentally made objects fall from where she was. She was quite sure they were doing it only for the smiles and laugh she would give them afterwards. They were so easy to satisfy, these kids. One day she would manage to get to the next stage.

Which was to have them demonstrate their magic once again!

She had first thought she could work on Nawaki. Though for a peace lover, he was harder to control though. He really easily picked on what she wanted, but took his sweet time to get things done! That kid! Or maybe he liked to make her pout? She had worked on the loveliest pout just for him. He'd like to pinch her cheeks, grinning like the idiot he was. It was frustrating her, and he seemed to guess fairly well when she was hiding her frustration. This kid was smart and observant; he would go far! She hoped he wouldn't go and kill himself for no reason.

But she was quite sure that if they couldn't train their magic, these kids would soon be gone! Autumn had passed and they were unable to practice because of her. And she was half right: they didn't exactly go away. She was the one who went elsewhere. She had expected to see new faces and wasn't disappointed: her father finally introduced her to his family: the Akimichi clan.

Some of these people had come before, but since she had been too sensible to their magic. She had been unable to properly meet them. So her father decided to show her to the prominent members of his family when he deemed her healthy enough. The Akimichi were quite a big family, and it explained why she had had to wear all these layers of fine clothes around her body to meet them. Her mother had really had a hard time making them wear these seven robes. It was robes, there was no other term to name them, seven robes for a baby.

Who could be rich enough to dress up their baby like this? She had wondered. Did her parents have that much of money? They too had worn several layers of clothes around them, accentuating the chubbiness of her father and hiding the curves of her mother. Honoka lived in a tiny house with her mother, and not inside the main family like the others had. It seemed to be linked with her mother's standing, but Honoka was too small to ask questions and no one talked about her mother around her.

This wealth didn't add up to her. They had the money to hire four people to look after one baby, and dress that nicely, yet the house seemed quite small to her in reality. There was only three rooms: the living room, the bathroom and the kitchen. She didn't know where his father worked, but he wasn't home often and always came back covered with dirt and dust. Given the military-oriented education the kids were having in this world, she supposed he worked for the army, but she had seen no military insignia except for his headband with the snail-like sign on it. Her mother seemed to work at a café or a restaurant: she had this apron with a logo on it.

Anyway, meeting with her new family made her understand several things. Her father had a rather good position in his clan, but not that good since he was not part of the main family. The main family were all the people with a name beginning with the "Cho" syllable: Chodai the clan leader, Choza his first born and seven-year-old heir to the clan, and Chomaru his last born who seemed to be a three-year-old brat very impressed by her mother. Her own father was Torifu.

"So this is your child." an old woman said after all the greetings. "She looks like her mother"

Honoka was quite sure they didn't like either she or her mother. Or it might only be the old woman who gave her this impression. Akiye, seemed to be her name, and she was all about blood purity and whatsoever. She was the mother of Chodai-Sama. From what Honoka had gathered, this woman ranked people depending on their family: you were at the top if you were an Akimichi, you were slightly below if you were a Nara or a Yamanaka (whoever these people could be), you were even below if you were a shinobi from another clan, even lesser if you were from a small clan, like dirt if you were a civilian and more than dirt if you were a stranger. As for her mother, she couldn't tell if it was the latter or not, since she was an employee of the clan and a civilian.

This was what Honoka had gathered, though the old crow was grumbling too much for her to understand properly. And she still had to make some progress on her comprehension of the local language, even though she had gotten much better at it. Speaking it was still out of question, the syllables were still problematic to her. Seriously, why were there so much combinations of syllables possible? She couldn't possibly understand that! And she dreaded the time she would have to start learning how to read and write.

And they said French was a difficult language to learn! Bullshit! Well at least she could learn much faster thanks to her baby brain. Oh that memory of hers, so skilled! She wished she could make a full use of it quickly!

Anyway, she had been formerly introduced to her new family, and most people in it didn't like her much. Actually their concern was about Honoka's weight and facial structure: she wasn't round enough to them! And that bothered her a lot! Eating to grow faster, yes, but she had her limits! Plus, what was with all this food worship they had! It was insane! They had been talking all day around the same meal which started at 11am and barely finished at 5pm. Seriously, what was that!

"Some say that Senjuu Nawaki's team is taking care of your child." someone said then. "How is that?"

Honoka frowned, trying to get what this was about. Nawaki's family name was Senjuu. Was it such a big deal? They didn't talk about his teacher, but about him directly.

"Danzo-San helped us." her father explained with a strange tone. Honoka couldn't tell if it was embarassment or pleasure.

"We will be forever grateful for his help" her mother said, her brow almost touching the ground.

"I heard he spoke highly of your daughter's intelligence." Chodai-Sama agreed.

There it was. Honoka guessed that was why she was led here even with her mother's status. She wasn't entirely of the main house, and they might not give her the clan's name now, but they would keep her around. The problem was that her sensibility to their magical energy remained, and she could tell the people in the room were restraining themselves. Not the children of course, but the adults were. She could brush their general aura if she focused enough but couldn't distinguish them. It was still too hard and that skill didn't seem vital at the time to her.

But once or twice as she brushed them, opening herself to their energy around, she felt the gazes of people locking onto her. They drifted to Torifu and Suki and locked onto her. They knew she was feeling them.

After this meeting, it was decided she would be kept from time to time with the second son of the clan head by Akimichi Akiye, which meant a great honour to their family. Her mother would take her on mornings and drop her with the old crow as she was going to work. This lady despised her mother so much! She heard her mean tone when she was talking to her mother. She heard her sugary coated-words when she was coaxing Chomaru. Honoka learned that it was because of her mother's origins. Suki was a civilian from wind country that her father's team had rescued during the war. Well, more than rescued since Suki walked all the way from her village to Konoha with a baby in her belly.

Honoka was unhappy with this situation. Her mother was the bravest woman she knew: a civilian who marched through the battlefield to find the father of her child. Akiye was just an old woman jealous of her mother's beauty and courage. Honoka'd show these people what it meant to mess with her family! Besides, she needed to work these flappy muscles of hers! They wouldn't see what was coming. And besides, she was just a baby, wasn't she, they had to expect her to do stuff like that. She trained her body a lot to get even faster when crowling on her belly, and later on her hands and knees.

But Akiye was fast, really fast. She had such fine reflexes for an old lady! It was really hard for her to wander around too far. Nevertheless, Honoka would always be more imaginative with her pranks. Once she painted the entire side of a closet with poop. Once she spayed her food with the spoon and got mashed veggies and soup on the ceiling. Once she vomited all over the white sheets of the bed she was napping on with Chomaru.

"You won't get away with this, Honoka-Chan." Akiye would say and punish her.

"Of course, Akiye-Sama" she would reply with a smile, because she knew who had to clean up her mess.

Apparently she was supposed to say Whatshisname-Sama when she was supposed to respect the person greatly, and Whatshisname-Kun when they were closer in age or equals. Akiye called her Honoka-Chan, and so did everyone else, even Chomaru. She didn't care yet. She would probably add the particles later, because showing respect to someone could be very valuable. Showering them with love and respect was the best. Honoka was rewarded with a sunny smile when she called her favourite brat "Nawaki-Onii-Chan".

People were often easy to figure out. They liked being pleased by people. They liked to talk about themselves and have people care about them with gifts and favours. If someone tells something, the best position is the listener because you can act as a confident, a trusted person. But also you learn new things about that person. So you kill two birds with one stone: you get trusted as a good listener, and you get all the weapons you need to get back at this person if needed. So these marks of respect, she would use them when the time comes.

Anyway, not being able to speak was still a problem since she wouldn't be able to get under Akiye's skin properly. The old lady had figured out she was doing all this mischief on purpose and she had retaliated. She had started using magic on her. She never told Honoka's parents about it, and nobody could see what she was doing. She was using just the right dose to make her skin crawl and made her cry.

But Chomaru soon understood that Honoka was getting hurt by Akiye, even if he couldn't figure out how or why. At the beginning of the pranks, he used to tumble on his chubby legs and call the old lady for her to see the ruckus she had caused. He understood that Honoka wasn't crying because she was scared or sorry about her pranks, she cried because she was hurt.

And damn it hurt so much! She could feel all the needles pricking her skin, all these invisible needles, likes waved of pain rolling in her body. But Honoka soon stopped to faint and understood two things. One: she had been right about this mindset thing, and accepting that magic was real and normal in this world helped her greatly. Two: the more she gritted Akiye's nerves, the more she'll get used to this magic until it would stop hurting.

But it still hurt so damn much!

Here you go my little readers.

I hope you enjoyed it. Please shower me with love and reviews like Honoka does with the world !

About my personal projects :I made a short movie called Morituri te Salutant, about Bridget Jones. I don't like it, beause the project was kinda dumped on me and I had zero people working like me were great, but it was a challenge the school were giving us. We tried to go realistic, but we had zero money. But I learned to manage a team of 20ish people and how to make a movie from the beginning to the end, so it was worth it.

I also did cool stuff like I went to Cannes to shoot short documentaries about TV dramas (I still have to edit the videos, and it takes me so long to do it...).This other project is called Serial Mippers, and you can find us on facebook and WordPress. I just got back from it actually, and it's one of the most exhausting experience I did. But I got to meet people from all around the world and I loved it.