A Ghost Story

A Brave New World

It turned out Toki's new home was an orphanage. It wasn't that bad really, all the other babies distracted the caretakers from her and there was a constant source of entertainment. She spent all her time training, sleeping, eating, and trying to talk.  "Training" was just focusing on trying to move every single muscle a few times and repeating.  For talking, Toki focused on remembering all the sounds she knew from every language she knew (English, Spanish, Japanese, and a bit of German). She repeated all those sounds over and over again as she worked on her muscle strength.  The sounds were hideous, garbled, scratchy, and often sounding more like 'Bluh' than anything.  After a week of this, Toki's movement was much (slightly) more controlled and she was happy with the success.  Now, she decided, was time to play with chakra. 

First she found her chakra, then she focused on moving it.  It helped to follow some meditation techniques such as visualizing it as a color (she choose neon green) and moving it with her breath.  Toki decided to call it a day when she was finally able to shift it around her body from her toes to her finger tips.  It would take another day to really get it down.  Opening her eyes, she was confused to see it was nearly dark.  She had started right after breakfast.  As if sensing her thoughts, one of the caretakers walked in and saw her awake.  "Oh good" she sighed in relief "You finally woke up. We were getting worried little girl." She kinda scolded as she walked over to the crib and picked up the infant.  "You missed two whole meal times. I was worried you were sick." she joked as she held the bottle.  The little girl really was thirsty she realized, the bottle disappeared in seconds and she unleashed an impressive burp a minute later.

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Two months passed in a similar manner, three days a week going to chakra training, before Toki decided she was gonna try climbing.  She had built up her neck muscles first and endured many neck cramps but it had payed off, she didn't have to worry about the weak neck muscles most infants had that could lead to spinal injuries as she unsteadily climbed to her knees and, with a moment's trepidation, grasped the wooden bars in front of her.  She pulled herself up using the support and practiced walking in circles around the crib all the while counting off her steps in that horrible, gurgly, broken baby pronounciation.  After about ten minutes, she seemed satisfied with herself and moved to the corner closest to another crib. 

Steeling herself, she grabbed the top of her crib and hauled herself up.  It took another twenty minutes before she was finally able to hook her chubby foot on the top and pull herself up so that she was lying on top of her prison.  She grabbed the bars on the outside of her crib and slid down so she was standing on the wooden ledge of her crib.  The nine week old girl leaned over until she was able to grab the bars of the crib nearest her with one hand.  Carefully, she dangled one foot over the empty space, then after crouching even lower, she swung the other foot into the abyss.

The dull 'thunk' of success was barely audible in the quiet room and Toki was suddenly a free baby.  The first order of business was more walking training.  With a small baby groan of pain over her bruised knees, she stood up with the support of another baby's crib.  Once she got to the empty wall, she knew she was in business.  By the time a caretaker walked in and caught her, she was speed walking with the wall and walking without it.

Now, she thought, all she needed to do was learn wall walking and there was no way these people could trap her in her stupid crib again.

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When she was only six months old it was painfully obvious Toki Migashi was a prodigy. The caretakers had given up trying to keep her contained because she would simply run up the walls and hang out on the ceiling to avoid being sent back to her crib. She knew the language as well as an adult and her pronunciation was that of a two or three year old. She. Ran. Up. The. Walls.  Word spread and the rumor mill was wondering about the prodigy orphan with an instinctive use of chakra (or so they thought).  It was a bit worrying to the Hokage just how many people knew of her and he was worried something would happen and sent an ANBU to shadow her just in case.  Three days later, the ANBU went to investigate a noise in the dark room of Toki's orphanage, just in time to watch a man dressed all in black fall to the floor.  He cautiously stepped out of the shadows and surveyed the scene.  Toki was hanging off the wall of her crib to look down at the man who looked as though he simply fainted.  Seeing no other threats, the ANBU bent to check the man's pulse and paused when there was none to be found.  He glanced up at Toki again and her curious eyes didn't seem so childlike anymore, they were interested yes, but aware, somehow this little girl killed a man and was curious about the physical results, not the death.  Later, it turned out the man was one of Kumo's spys that they had been feeding false information.  He must have been trying to either bring this new prodigy over to Kumo to use, or (more likely) exterminate a future S-rank enemy.