Chapter 2: The Attacker
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Holly didn't so much as rise to consciousness as get jolted abruptly into it. The transition from 'asleep' to 'not' was anything but gentle, not to mention more than a bit painful.
Oh, and there was a lot of pain.
Her entire back, left side and right hand were a mass of dully throbbing pain, but other than that she seemed fine. And alive. Alive was good.
Although alive and with no freaking idea where she was… not so good.
She was experienced in pain, however, and waking up in a different location than where she had been knocked out was also not a new experience (no matter how much she would prefer it to be).
She tried to keep her breathing even and steady, feigning sleep and buying time to get a read on the environment.
The room didn't smell of disinfectant and other hospital stuff in the over-bearing way of a proper hospital room, so that ruled out official care. It also smelled more than a bit like the forest she'd been traversing for the past week or so, meaning she was probably in a house in the forest, ergo nowhere near any kind of help had she been captured by some kind of hermit-psychopath that made a habit of dissecting poor lost souls for fun.
Happy thought there.
The almost-good thing was that there was only one scent in the room, so at least it was even odds should it come to some kind of battle or whatever.
Holly shifted a little and the distinct feeling of bandages restricting her chest and down her arm made her feel a little optimistic – maybe she'd been taken in and healed by someone who saved her stupid ass from whatever had attacked her?
Hey, it could happen.
…Even so, she wasn't quite sure if she was referring to the possibility of being saved from her attacker or herself being anything approaching optimistic.
It was decidedly the former, she acknowledged privately not even a second later. She just wasn't the optimistic sort. Nor was she all-that pessimistic, though; she preferred the term 'realist'. It was just realistic to expect the weirdest shit to happen to her – there was precedence, after all.
She was rudely broken out of her thoughts by a voice that was worryingly close to her form – if she had to guess, she'd say hovering over her face. Creepy.
Of course, she might just find it creepy because she had no idea what in the hell the voice was saying.
Language barriers sucked.
Fortunately, she did understand the warm tone and could deduce from that that the person was at least in the 'probably won't try to kill me' category as opposed to the 'definitely' will. Not that she really trusted this first assessment – she'd had a good lot of problems from 'first-impression' judgements.
There was also something… off about the old woman with a twinkle in her eye that looked nothing like the one that used to inhabit a certain Headmaster's. It made her feel… uncomfortable. Kinda like when she was staring down the barrel of a crate full of blast-ended skrewts.
But she could ignore that for now, mostly because it was a terrifying thought and not encouraging to her continued wellbeing… especially since she was in absolutely no position to even be thinking about escaping the current situation.
Actually, going on how terrible her body currently felt, she'd guess it would take a few days to be on her feet again, and that would be attributed to her magic's inherent ability to speed up healing. Unfortunately, that only kicked in when she was properly sleeping, and there was also the depressing fact that she had no control over it what-so-ever.
Banishing the kind of petulant annoyance that came from her own magic's reluctance to heal her, Holly turned her thoughts to examining the old woman before her. She didn't look like much on the surface; the woman had thick white hair tied back in a bun, a rounded, bronzed and wrinkled face, thin arms that were liberally covered in spots and freckles, a scarf around her neck and practical shirt and pants – she was also pretty tiny. The woman didn't, however, exude the same aura as she had experienced around most senior citizens – there was a certain 'air' about her that said she was a no-nonsense kind of person, and that she was a threat and extremely capable of defending and taking care of herself. The woman also stood straight, and didn't appear to be suffering any problems with brittle bones that would strike other women of her age.
All in all, the only reason Holly wasn't attempting to stumble idiotically out of bed to make a wild (and probably doomed) attempt at escape was because she had a bad feeling this woman wouldn't be amused at escape attempts. She wasn't really sure it was of the 'I-will-care-for-my-patient-no-matter-what-they-think' variety or the alternate 'you-are-my-prisoner' option. She crossed her fingers and hoped for the former, although she really had no idea because of the aforementioned language barrier.
It was at this point the woman's brows drew together and she spoke the same thing again, but with an underlying edge to her tone that left no doubt that she was expecting some kind of response.
Holly drew in a breath to come clean about having no bloody idea what the other was saying, but was cut off by her own hacking coughs.
Her mouth felt like it had had cotton wool stuffed half-way down her oesophagus and that trace-elements were still stuck in there from the crappy removal job.
The woman above her quickly scooped up a glass filled with some liquid – Holly was hoping that it was only water – before using a hand to lift her up a little so she could properly tip the contents down her throat.
Holly swallowed it up greedily, enjoying the soothing effect it had on her poor throat before feeling herself being lowered back onto the bed. A wave of exhaustion swept over her, and she was uncertain if the water was drugged or if it was just natural fatigue that gripped her.
Either way, her eyelids felt heavy and she slipped into a more natural sleep, forgetting temporarily the problems that she had been experiencing since the portal fiasco.
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She felt a bit more human when next consciousness hit.
Judging by the sounds coming from outside and how dark the room was, she easily deduced that it was night this time.
Which suited her just fine.
Steeling herself, she pushed past what the aches and spiking pain around her ribs told her and slid out of the bed, thankful that it was one of those floor-height things… a 'futon' she thought it was called.
She clenched her left hand in a fist – the one that didn't have a hole in it – and gritted her teeth before pulling herself to her feet. It hurt. When she was standing, she paused for a second and delved into more of the advanced hearing she got from Spook and just barely restrained a sigh of relief from hearing the deep and steady breathing that came from somewhere quite close to her room.
But first things first.
Magic was a nifty little thing. Especially when regarding important items, and the ability to protect and track said items. And you didn't even need a wand after the initial linking spell.
She had pierced her ears after her fifteenth birthday, but not really in a fit of teenage rebellion or just for the hell of it – it had been strictly practical; what with how she just seemed to have trouble holding on to any of her belongings for any amount of time. There was a set of sleepers, and then a set of studs in the lobes of her ear, along with a single band of metal about a centimetre in width that settled along the rim of her ear. They were not especially noticeable and spelled against being forcibly removed – exactly what she'd needed. They were all made of silver, the studs containing obsidian centres – in other words, optimal for magical conductivity.
She smirked a little, congratulating herself for the sheer stroke of genius that led to the idea, and moved her hand to finger the stud on her left ear, which hummed when she activated it by applying the proper amount of pressure and it immediately nudged her to move to a previously unnoticed set of shelves in a corner of the room.
She slid it open, and lo-and-behold, her bag of awesome was right there! Of course, she was studiously ignoring the lock that she'd had to pick to get into said location (thankyou Gred and Forge), but she didn't really like having her belongings withheld.
As quietly as possible, she zipped open the main part and focused on what she needed and waited a beat as an object resembling an innocuous small red bouncy-ball flew out and into her hand. Gotta love those spells that made it possible to sort through the junk that tended to accumulate when you had a bottomless bag.
Now was the tricky part.
She was limping now, and leaning against the wall to remain upright, but if she was going to get an idea on what she'd just crashed into, she needed to do this. Failure was not an option.
The floorboards in the hall didn't creak, but it didn't stop her from avoiding the doorway, taking an excessively tall step to clear it – hell, she was paranoid, but if she'd read the woman that could possibly be her saviour or jailer correctly, there was no doubt there would be precautions for if she had woken up in the middle of the night.
Something about the old woman carried a decided air of almost Moody-level paranoia – and hell, Holly would have it as well while taking a beaten up stranger into her house where she lived alone; when you thought about it, it was really just common sense to have some kind of security measure just in case the person you had so selflessly helped became a threat.
A half-minute later saw Holly studiously ignoring the little voice in the back of her head that plainly pointed out that hovering near the doorway of the sleeping woman and calculating the proper projection for hitting her target was only something that a 'threat' would do.
Praying for her aim not to fail her, she threw the small ball at the sleeping woman.
When the ball was not even a meter from her, the woman's eyes snapped open (scaring the begeezus out of Holly in the process) and she shot up in bed, a hand whipping up to catch the projectile.
Now, this struck Holly as the overreaction of the century (along with being amazingly impressed that she apparently could detect stuff coming at her while deeply asleep at the same time) and she was deliriously happy that she'd gone with the paranoid-version of her plan. No doubt had she tried to get within ten-paces of the woman her mission would be shot-down and foiled, leaving her with awkward questions to answer. But this was not the case.
That was no normal bouncy ball. It was courtesy of the twins Weasley (like all her good stuff was) and designed to get one out of sticky situations. It wasn't main-stream stuff because of its sheer effectiveness and would be highly dangerous had they found their way into the hands of any of the Dark Tosser's band of Merry Munchers during the war.
Throw them against any object? They'd be indistinguishable to a regular bouncy ball.
Throw them against Skin?
It only took another split second for the ball to hit the hand that had risen automatically in defence of more vital areas. Once it did, however, it seemed to melt into the intercepting palm before disappearing, as if it hadn't even existed. The woman's eyes rolled up and her body slumped back against the mattress, breathing almost instantly settling back into a deep and steady rhythm that indicated deep sleep.
Holly had a hand on her chest, steeling herself after the fright before nervously crossing the doorway and limping over to the bed.
She wasn't worried about the woman's health, or even feeling particularly guilty of employing decidedly underhand tricks to gain some proper information – the ball only forced a natural sleep, ensured to last two hours and even left the victim feeling more rejuvenated than natural sleep should once it wore off. The Weasley's had used it to prank the teacher's rooms with impunity – one hit had Snape sleeping like a baby while they wrote graffiti on his wall and raided the potion stocks.
She needed to do this, so she steeled herself for it and reached over the woman, carefully prying open one eyelid and whispering "Legilimens".
Mind Arts were a tricky thing.
She remembered clearly what Snape had said so long ago about the mind not being a book to be opened at will and examined at leisure. It was kind of hard to forget it, especially considering how immediately afterwards the greasy bat had forced a heavy-handed legilimency probe into her mind, splitting apart whatever defences she'd had naturally like a warm knife through butter.
Using legilimency is easier when you catch the target off-guard, relaxed, or otherwise vulnerable and the emotional state of the victim has the benefit of bringing relevant memories to surface.
That's the first thing she'd been told by the Auror – Emanuel Baxter – that had tutored her (on the sly) in the technique.
Some people needed to say the words, others needed their wands, and those who were particularly good at it can always tell when people are lying to them, even without eye contact.
Up until now, the extent of using it for her had been during the extensive training, and afterwards it was a split between Death Eaters and cracking into Voldiemold's mind via the link.
She had also never done it wandlessly, nor on a mundane person. Which was why she had voiced the spell, and why she had used up the last of the Twin's ingenious sleeper-balls before attempting it, even before she'd known of the woman's unnatural ability to know when snuck up on.
She slipped seamlessly into the woman's unconscious psych, and allowed the probe to drift away from thoughts and into what she had taken to calling the 'base level' of the mind. This was where you saw a person's mindscape, and you could access deeper thoughts and ideas than had she been scanning surface thoughts.
Holly felt a little bit safer seeing that it was in the form of a relatively peaceful glade, with sunlight filtering through surrounding trees. It was actually the most organised mind she'd yet to see on someone who wasn't an occlumens, which actually made it all the easier to avoid personal thoughts and go straight to what she was looking for – language.
'Learning' language via memory transfer of legilimency worked by creating corresponding neural pathways in the receiver's brain that copy those of the target. Millions upon millions of connections forged forcefully in the space of seconds… well, it was said to hurt like a bitch. Not to mention it would place undue stress on the brain, and then the magic would filter down to muscles and manipulate vocal cords so they can make the sounds that your brain can now understand. Add to that reading comprehension and working the proper muscles in the hand… well, Holly fully expected to suffer the mother of all migraines, after she actually was able to regain consciousness.
If she was a betting girl, she'd put money on this thing knocking her out for a week at minimum… or a month if she didn't do it perfectly.
But it was her only option as far as being able to fully operate in this world – she didn't want to be stumbling around for months on end and ignorant to everything going on around her, which meant knowing the language and being able to communicate effectively.
The woman hadn't killed her yet, so it was highly likely she'd at least be left to wake up and explain herself… if she was lucky.
In the end and with a bit of luck, she'd be capable of speaking, reading and writing the new language on top of English.
It would probably take the information sixty-three hours to properly assimilate itself when she put a filter on it, and she could put a delay on when it actually started – just enough time to put everything back where it was before and collapse back on her bed. The Weasley-ball still had an hour and thirty minutes left, so if she made any noise it wouldn't cause the woman undue alarm – she'd just have to hope she'd stop screaming or whatever before the forced-sleep wore off.
She hesitated for a moment before snatching the relevant memories, twisting on the proper limits and quickly retreating from the woman's mind, being extremely careful not to touch anything or move something not meant to be trifled with.
Emerald eyes snapped open and Holly practically leapt to her feet and fled the room, a frantic edge to her usual cat-like movements as she clumsily retreated back into the room she'd woken up in. With fumbling movements she locked her bag away in its original spot before crawling on trembling legs to the futon, distantly relieved it was so easy to get in.
Three, two, one…
A ragged scream ripped from her abused throat and her world was consumed with pain.
Holly couldn't help but question the sanity of her actions in a remote part of her brain.
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'Why can't I put some kind of limiter on how much time I'm allowed to spend unconscious in any given month?' Were the red-head's groggy thoughts as soon as she found herself capable of having them once again.
Her fingers twitched and she winced at the unnatural pulling feeling she associated with her right hand – no doubt a remnant from the recent hole cut through it – and she could now feel a damp cloth lying on her forehead, which seemed to have a soothing effect on it. No doubt a problem because of her latest idiotic stunt.
Her lips twisted into a grimace as she remembered exactly how stupid she'd been just as an epic migraine announced its arrival. Now that she could look back on it, Holly was frankly shocked that she'd managed to keep her brain intact after such a stupid stunt. Yes, she thought sarcastically, it may not have been the brightest idea to attempt such a complicated and delicate feat of magic for the first time while hopped up on pain-relieving drugs and the after-effects of being heavily injured just before.
"Ah, so you're awake now, are you?"
It took a few moments for Holly to realise that yes, there was a voice, and no, she had never heard the voice before. She cracked an eye open (inordinately annoyed at the crusty stuff that tried to undermine this feat) and found that everything was fuzzy, reminding her of times long past when she'd needed glasses to be able to see anything properly.
She blinked a bit, and the blobby thing that seemed to be hovering over her ominously came into sharp relief, evolving into the old woman she'd hijacked a language from last time she'd been capable of coherent thought. She opened her mouth to calmly inform her that she'd appreciate a drink to extract all the cotton from her throat but all that came out was a kind of strangled gurgle.
The woman's eyes narrowed a bit but she seemed to see the merit in her guest being able to respond to interrogation, and so reached to pick something up that was out of Holly's line of sight before moving to hold it to her lips, tipping it back and allowing it to sooth her parched throat.
"Now." The glass was set down with a clink. "You will tell me what you are doing in this forest."
Holly's green eyes were wide as she stared up at the ferocious visage of the old lady and resisted the urge to 'eep' while her thoughts ran at a hundred miles per hour. "Um… err… well… you see… Aww dammit." She cursed.
She blinked up at the Scary Lady and tried, "I don't suppose you'd believe instantaneous materialization, would you?"
The old lady snorted at her in an I-don't-take-shit voice, shooting down Holly's attempt of telling the truth, and nothin' but the truth. Ironic, that.
A gusty sigh issued from the girl in the bed as she slumped down and said, "Well, my theory is that the universe hates me, and thus likes to force these things upon my person."
One delicate white eyebrow rose on the face that otherwise may as well have been carved out of stone, for all the expression it held.
Holly donned her patented I-didn't-do-anything-why-do-you-think-I've-done-something look and forged ahead, nodding as if she had gotten a verbal response, "Uh-ha yup, pretty crazy there. Do you know that forest is really large?" she asked rhetorically, "well, I just happened to have been dumped in there by nefarious means and persons unknown, and didn't know the direction out, so I'd been wandering around in there for ages when I finally thought I heard footsteps, but it turned out to be some kind of weird animal that throws pointy objects and that bashed me into a tree and I swear I haven't burnt anything and thank-you for saving me and I-"
"You're babbling." The Crazy Lady deadpanned.
"Heh heh heh… please don't kill me?" Holly battered her eyes and did her best approximation of an adorable puppy-dog look.
The Crazy Lady let out a drawn out sigh, shaking her head and muttering something under her breath about 'kid's these days' before she spoke directly to the girl in her house, "So, to qualify you are…?"
"Here." Holly pointed out unhelpfully.
Crazy Lady seemed to think it was not worth the effort to roll her eyes and merely continued on, "And you are here because…?"
"…of a very bad group of people." Holly continued, seemingly oblivious to the twitching under the Crazy Lady's left eye.
"And you think you were attacked…?"
Holly nodded, "Yup, by the weird animal thing that threw pointy objects!"
The woman used her hands to run at her temples before looking accusingly down at the girl, "You have no sense of self-preservation, do you?"
Holly affected an offended disposition and said, "I'd like to inform you that I have very good self-preservation instincts!"
The woman stared at the small red-head, letting her eyes linger on the bandages (that just happened to cover about three-quarters of her body) and her prostrated state before saying, in a voice that adults use on their children to be condescending, "Of course. And that's why you are here, in my house, cut up and generally horribly wounded having been unconscious for the past ten days. You also seem to have no idea what you are talking to, do you?"
"Eh?"
Holly must have looked terribly confused, for the Crazy Lady seemed to derive some amusement from the expression on her face as she said in a bewildered tone to herself, "Huh, you really do have no idea to whom you are speaking, don't you?"
Holly just raised an eyebrow, a nonplussed look on her face.
The woman drew herself up and announced with a flair that ruined the generally foreboding air that had permeated the room previously; "I! I am Tanaka Shiori, retired kunoichi of the Leaf, sensei of the famous Tsunade of the Sannin in medical jutsu! One of the oldest ninja alive to this day! Hermit of the Kyokan Forest!" Of course, accompanying these grand words were large hand gestures, throwing the poor Potter for a loop.
The woman gazed avidly at Holly's face, seemingly expecting her to know something about whatever titles she had just spouted off. Holly decided to start with the first thing saying a little helplessly, "…Kunoichi?"
Crazy Lady's eyes practically dropped out of her head, and after a moment she surged forward, shoving Holly roughly back down. Her hands were doing a weird green-glowing thing but Holly decided not to comment on it. The woman was muttering under her breath, and with a bit of help from Spook Holly caught, "Head looks ok… high pressure on the frontal lobe… oh, that shouldn't be like that… possibly memory loss?" She continued mumbling, but Holly was quite offended. Crazy Lady thought she had amnesia because she didn't know whatever the hell a kunoichi was? Or maybe she was so full of herself that not knowing of the woman set her off?
"Hey!" She protested, attempting to swat at the hands ghosting across her forehead with the one hand available to her, "I do not have memory loss!"
"Yeah, sure, I'd believe that, but your brain seems to have been really battered lately – I've never seen something like this to this extent before… it seems like it has really been put through the ringer in a very short amount of time."
The woman – Shiori, she reminded herself – did something to her forehead that actually seemed to sooth her pounding migraine (a pesky after effect of being an idiot) and Holly couldn't bring herself to protest again.
"Wait a second!" The woman pointed a finger accusingly so close to Holly's face it made her go cross-eyed, "You didn't by chance use a large amount of kage bushin recently, did you? 'Cause if you're just one of those young idiot-ninja running around with no idea on the proper way to use jutsu, then I ain't helping you one bit!"
Still cross-eyed, Holly just resulted to attempting to have any idea what the freaking Crazy Lady was going on about, "…Kage bushin? Ninja? I'm sorry obaasan, but you'll have to get off the sauce before I have any clue what you're talking about."
The old woman's eye-tick made reappearance, and her eyes narrowed dangerously as she seemed to examine the girl for any untruths in her countenance. A few moments later the woman nodded victoriously and pronounced her diagnosis, "Amnesia then. You're lucky girl, ya know that?!"
Holly blinked at the woman's shift of mood, "Huh?"
The Crazy Lady nodded, "Yup. You see, I don't like intruders in my neck of the woods."
"Eh?"
"Uh-ha. Had you not have as good instincts and reflexes as you do… well, you'd be dead." The woman said it like she was talking about the expected weather tomorrow.
"Wha?" Holly, as one would imagine, was quite alarmed.
"Oh yes." The woman nodded cheerfully, moving over to check the bandages covering her right hand, "You caught me quite off-guard. I have no idea how you got so bloody close! No one's gotten so far past my perimeter in ages – thought you were a shinobi on a hit! But you – I mean, wow! I haven't seen anyone without training have those kind of reflexes… well, ever. Eh, I guess you kinda botched it with allowing the kunai to sink into your hand, but we can't all be perfect. Hmm, with a bit of training…"
During all this chatting, the woman had moved from examining the hand, which had healed skin that was an angry red where the pointy object had hit, over to her ribs and finally down her leg. She had removed and re-dressed two particularly nasty jagged pink-spots that seemed to be leaking something (that Holly decided was a figment of her imagination) and lastly brushed her hands together, nodding to herself.
"Wait a second." The tone was dark, and emerald eyes stared accusingly up at Crazy Lady who was now looking a tad bit uncomfortable. "YOU HIT ME WITH A POINTY OBJECT AND THREW ME INTO A TREE?! THAT WAS YOU THAT ATTACKED ME?!" Holly shrieked, pissed that the lady that she'd come to decide was nice, kind and above all not likely to try to kill her had actually been the one responsible for her current sorry-state.
"Ah ha-ha ha… well, it was dark…"
"NO EXCUSE!"
"…And I am a little on the old-side."
"Hah! More like ancient!"
"…And it's hardly my fault if I'm a wanted woman."
"Psh, 'not my fault' she says."
"…And you really ought to have stayed away from my house, girl!"
"Oh yeah, how the hell would I know I was near your house, obaasan?"
"…And it's not like there was any lasting harm done!"
"Oh, if you call me being unconscious for freaking ten days 'no lasting harm'!" Of course, Holly conveniently forgot her own role in her role in her own predicament.
"…and I even patched you up myself!"
"Grrr – it's just as well you patched me up you Crazy Old Hag! YOU WERE THE REASON I WAS HURT IN THE FIRST PLACE!"
"…So, no harm done!"
Holly swore that her face was red with suppressed rage (which did no good at all for her appearance, what with the fire red-hair and all) and she settled for scowling ferociously at the woman in her best approximation of the Snape Glare o' Doom peppered with touches of McGonagall's 'Oh-no-you-didn't!' Scowl. It seemed to not even deter the old woman, who was looking quite pleased with her own rendition of events.
Holly settled for mumbling curses under her breath interspersed with descriptions of what she would do the second she was capable of walking around (and committing homicide).
Tanaka Shiori, or 'Crazy Lady' as Holly would forever dub her in the safety of her own mind, took that moment to pretend the conversation never happened and proceeded to do the thing every person trained in medicine did when faced with a patient: fling questions about their physical state.
"Does it hurt when I do this?"
"…Ow! Yes, dammit!"
"How bout here?"
"…Kuso! Don't poke that!"
"And here?"
"…Grrr. You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" Holly was summarily ignored.
"Hmm, you seem to be suffering from malnutrition."
"…I am NOT short!"
Crazy Lady snickered at that, and continued examining a very grumpy witch for the next half hour, making sure to get a thorough idea of what was healing properly and what wasn't.
It was only when Crazy's brows crinkled and she looked worried that Holly found the need to ask any questions. "Ok, what's wrong with me, doc? Will I live?"
The last sentence was a rather poor attempt at a joke, but most of Holly's idea of a joke revolved around decidedly morbid humour – what with having a freaking Dark Lord and Death Sentence (admittedly referred to as 'Prophesy' in some circles) hanging over her head before she could fully control her motor skills, it was no wonder.
The Crazy Lady looked at her with wide eyes and in the cliché 'you look like you've seen a ghost' way that people tend to comment on because someone has gone a ghastly shade of white for no particular reason at all. Holly restrained herself (just barely, and only then because such jokes just lost any substance when you have to hear it so many times a day through magical education) "…So?"
"You're not alive."
Not particularly the thing you want to hear from someone supposedly skilled in medicine, even if they seemed to employ the use of 'glowing green hands' to do it – which, by the way, she hadn't forgotten, just ignored because she figured it was not hurting her and she couldn't be bothered to demand for some kind of explanation… hell, the most times she'd been in an emergency wing, she'd been treated by a person wielding a stick as a primary instrument.
"You can't bealive."
Holly pouted as the trained professional felt the need to feel her pulse. What was it about her and people just assuming she should be dead?
Dammit, the whole avada kedavra thing coulda happened to any one… maybe. And all those 'near death' experiences… well, they were near death, not dead… except for that one time when she really did die; that was dead. But she wasn't dead, and she didn't have the first clue as to why Crazy Lady believed she should be dead (apart from the whole 'I-tried-to-kill-you-on-accident-sorry-I'll-just-fix-you-up-now-shall-I?' thing) because Crazy Lady had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA of her history with Death.
"How-the-hell-are-you-alive?!"
The poor woman was close to hyperventilating now, and Holly was a little disconcerted at the continued oh-shit-I'm-seeing-a-ghost stare that had been directed at her for approximately the last minute or so. Not to mention she was worried the old hag might have a heart attack soon if that look wasn't wiped off her face.
"Oh Kami!!"
Holly sighed in a put-upon way and raised her left hand before slapping the panicky woman across the face.
Heh, she'd always wanted to do that.
"Okay." She said calmly, having successfully attracted the woman's attention, "You will tell me right now why I should be dead, ok? And if you need to, I'll even let you check my pulse again, hmm?"
Crazy Lady took a deep ragged breath and slumped down, her fingers almost unwillingly trailing down to rest on Holly's pulse once again, and her expression was strange as she felt it under her fingers. The apparent reason Holly should be dead came tumbling out of the woman's mouth not long after that, "You have the worst chakra system I've ever seen."
Holly pursed her lips, not really getting what 'chakra' was, let alone why it should have been the cause of her Imminent Doom.
The old woman caught the completely lost look on Holly's face and shook her head, muttering something unpleasant about amnesia sufferers before saying slowly and with small words, "Chakra is what allows us to be alive."
Seeing that the bewildered look on her victim/patient's face had not changed, she decided extra detail was needed. "Chakra is a mix of spiritual and physical energy that is in every living thing. There has to be a balance, otherwise one would totally overpower the other, resulting in death."
"So? Sure, that's a nice piece of trivia, but how does that help me right now?" Holly butted in.
Old lady Tanaka's face pulled into the slightly constipated look of a person who had had their view of the world systematically destroyed in the space of ten minutes. "So? SO?!" Her voice got high and semi-hysterical, but she managed to calm it down a bit and continue, "So have you ever heard of yin and yang? The Circle? Balance?! If one should overpower the other, there is none! One cannot exist without the other! It would not be possible! It should not be possible! You have far too much spiritual energy, and far too little physical energy!"
Holly raised an eyebrow, still not seeing why the woman was panicking so extensively.
The old woman slumped, putting a hand to her forehead and using it to softly hit herself, probably in the hopes that she'd wake up the next day and have all this be a very disturbing and realistic dream.
"So you, my little idiotic home-invader ("Hey!" Holly objected quietly) should not have even survived your birth! It has been documented that any child with such a significant chakra imbalance as you, are always still-births. Life cannot be sustained like that – with one, there must be the other! Kami!" And then the woman went on to produce such a vulgar string of words that Holly was ridiculously impressed at her own good choice of a language-donor.
Oh. Well, didn't that just sound peachy. She'd apparently played devil's advocate with Death in the womb. Before she was even freakin' born yet. Hey, she could be petulant about this latest revelation if she wanted to be.
The old woman jumped up and started pacing, agitatedly running a hand through her hair and muttering to herself, managing to look quite deranged. She stopped after a few circuits from wall-to-wall and snapped her fingers, focusing on the wide-eyed girl on the bed, "Parents?"
Holly, by some divine intervention, got what Crazy Woman was asking and replied, "Dead when I was one."
The woman nodded as if this was to be expected, before continuing to pace furiously. "…Anything odd ever happen around you?"
Oh, other than avoiding death on a semi-regular basis, being able to do magic when my freaking wand isn't broken, and flying on a broomstick to participate in a popular sport?
Holly thought about her options for all of a few seconds before saying, "Er, does being able to change into a cat count as odd?"
Holly decided that the completely gobsmacked expression on Crazy Lady's face was worth taking the chance of being crucified. She snickered. After all, wasn't that woman the one with the glowing-green healing hands? And anyway, it was soo much more comfortable sleeping as Spook… being able to curl up anywhere, having fur and fitting into a tiny space where your crazy fans couldn't hope to find you…
Crazy Lady's voice broke through Holly's adoring monologue on the benefits of being an ocelot – "…-ur parents. So if that is the case, this can all be put down to a crazy Blood Limit of some sought." The woman was nodding to herself in satisfaction, apparently having solved the dilemma of her collapsing world view.
"…Blood Limit?" Holly tried, wondering if she even wanted to know.
There was a smirk on the old woman's face now and she airily replied with a wave of her hand, "Oh, you know – Blood Limit, Kekkei Genkai – a technique inherited by blood. Means either one or both of your parents had it and you inherited it. If the animal transformation is some kind of advanced form of it, then their chakra imbalance probably would have never been picked up because it takes a very skilled medic to check things like that and only if the person is very still."
Huh. Holly's view on the wizarding world admittedly changed quite a bit after that explanation. If you went by what purebloods said, 'magic' comes from the blood. And hell, she imagined enough squibs would have been abandoned in the normal world to find each other and produce magical babies, meaning so-called 'muggleborns' appearing. She decided to completely ignore that niggling thought of trying to guess just how closely everyone in the wizarding world was related to all carry this gene. The rate of inbreeding alone… egads, she'd never look at a wizard the same way again.
Holly was pulled back to the room, watching bemusedly as Crazy Lady had ripped out a notebook and was currently scribbling in it furiously.
"Er, whatcha doin?" She asked carefully.
"Recording a medical miracle" was the distracted answer.
Having known Hermione, Holly recognised the sight of an Intellectual Woman on a Mission, and left it at that. As long as the lady didn't try to turn her into a lab cat, she decided that she didn't want to know. The technical terms alone would no doubt be over her head, and she had no wish of reliving her migraine so soon.
She sighed and looked uninterestedly up at the ceiling, distracting herself with counting the holes in the white plaster. Her eyes trailed around to see the room, which she hadn't really bothered to note the décor and noticed the furniture was a dark wood, that the floorboards were light and the walls were a pale yellow colour. She could also see green foliage through the large window that was near her left side – the futon she was resting on was roughly in the middle against the wall furthest from the door. The cupboard she had broken into before her language correction stunt was backed against the right wall.
She drummed her fingers against the floor – only with her left hand, because her right was feeling very horrible right now. Gods, she had almost managed to forget how crappy being laid up with wounds was.
"I'm bored." She wasn't whining. And whoever said so should get their ears checked.
"Suck it up."
"But I'm bored."
"Tough Luck. Look, kid… err hey, what's your name anyway?" Crazy Lady was blinking as if it had just occurred to her that she had not once received an answer to that question.
'Oh shit' ran through Holly's mind in that moment. She'd thought she had successfully dodged that bullet a while ago. The name 'Holly Potter' would be way out of place with this language – she didn't even think Crazy Lady would be able to pronounce it accurately.
She stared blankly up at the ceiling for a moment before saying lamely, "Err… amnesia?"
The woman gave her a droll stare that communicated just how much she believed that – even though she was the one convinced Holly had amnesia in the first place – before turning back to her notebook and saying, "Okay, I'll call you Rei then."
Holly rolled her eyes when her brain supplied that one form of 'Rei' could be translated as 'ghost', 'spirit' or 'departed soul'. There were a few other translations, but she had a feeling these were probably what the woman had in mind. Was this whole 'yin and yang' crap so important?
"Rei it is" she murmured under her breath before allowing her head to drop back down on the pillow.
«×φ×»
Disclaimer ('nuff said)
Okay. So… I got a hell of a surprise when I went into my inbox and found all these messages saying people put this story on favourite/alert. I seriously didn't really expect any kind of response cos I'm just having a bit of fun, but I guess some people enjoyed reading my wacked out ideas, so I decided I may as well post this chapter. I hope you guys enjoyed this, and I love reviews (hint hint nudge nudge) and whatever questions someone may have, I'd be happy to answer.
Oh, and if you want to see what I had in mind for Holly's necklace, go to: http://www(dot)kultofathena(dot)com/images%5C200662_l(dot)jpg …(just fix up the spaces and change (dot) into a full stop and you should be right)
Later, skyflyte12