Cala Jo

Name: Enhanced Condition
Type: Personal/Physical/Mental
Description: The user is at the peak physical and/or mental condition of their particular species can achieve without any super-/unnatural methods. This usually entails that they are faster, stronger, more intelligent and overall superior to fellow members of their species without being obviously supernatural.
Applications

   Enhanced Agility
   Enhanced Athleticism
   Enhanced Balance
   Enhanced Climbing
   Enhanced Combat
   Enhanced Dexterity
   Enhanced Durability
   Enhanced Endurance
   Enhanced Flexibility
   Enhanced Jump
   Enhanced Immunity
   Enhanced Intelligence
   Enhanced Lung Capacity
   Enhanced Marksmanship
   Enhanced Memory
   Enhanced Reflexes
   Enhanced Regeneration
   Enhanced Senses
   Enhanced Speed
   Enhanced Stamina
   Enhanced Strength
   Enhanced Wisdom

"Some people just need to die."

The first words spoken to her when she asked why she was to undergo the training her new father had planned out for her. The year was 1602, and Cala Jo, known then simply as Cala, was just adopted from the local slum orphanage. She was only six years old at the time, and already was going to enter into a world of death and pain.

Her new father was a mercenary of sorts. A hired killer who took any target no matter how difficult or popular said target was. The man had never had any sort of long-term relationship with a woman (or man for that matter), and had spent the good part of a year searching through the many orphanages his London home provided: searching for that one particularly perfect child that fit the bill of what he was looking for.

Cala was that child. And it would seal her fate sooner than she expected.

Her new life started right away. From the moment the sun rose to the moment it set she underwent training of all kinds. Balance. Speed. Agility. Dexterity. Strength. Those were taught to her in the morning. If she did well then she was allowed an hour break instead of just fifteen minutes which she would be given otherwise (enough time to eat a quick lunch).

After lunch was hand to hand combat. How to strike. How to block. How to counter. She learned quickly that complaining got her nowhere. There was no room in this profession to be babied. To be coddled. It was kill or be killed. So, she learned quickly not to milk her wounds, to ignore them, to forget about them until she could no longer feel them. This training always kept her busy up until dinner when again she was allotted either an hour or fifteen minutes, depending on how well she had done.

Then, came the weapon training after lunch. Swords. Throwing knives. Bow and arrow. She would train until it was too dark to see outside, and then be sent in the house to relax and play games, games designed to enhance her mind, to make her quick thinking and logical.

At first this new routine was hard: she didn't have chores like a normal child (the maid the man hired to clean and cook took care of all of that), but the training she was put through was extreme. However, days turned into weeks, and she quickly began to catch on, earning herself more and more hour long breaks instead of the fifteen minutes she had been earning beforehand.

As the weeks progressed into months she grew even more accustomed to her trainings. It was almost easy now: and as soon as her new father realized this, he upped the training, making it even more extreme.

Months turned into years, and finally, at the age of ten, her father announced that she was old enough, ready enough, to accompany him on his first kill. The idea behind it was that he could train her mentally and physically, but emotionally.... well, that took experience. There was no telling how she would handle seeing her first kill, and he wanted her to be as prepared as possible, so taking her with him seemed the only plausible way.


“This was a dream. A very bad, bad dream, brought on by poisoning due to those berries I ate. Here it was, a deal with the devil. At what price? My soul. He watched me expectantly and threateningly all at the same time. If I said no, I knew what would happen, 'Save the glass, bar wench, I’m drinking from the bottle!' Happy hour, with my neck on tap. If I said yes, I’d be agreeing to a partnership with pure evil."

We left in the early hours of the evening with the plan to travel straight through the night. Along the way tips were given to Cala, reminders to stay as quiet as possible. To keep herself steady. To not give their location away no matter how scared she was, or how might all of the blood might disgust her.

Little did they know... they were being hunted.

It was about two hours before the break of dawn when that maddening cackle filled the air. Both whipped around, and Cala let out a screech that was loud enough to send the birds flying off. A hand was clamped hard, almost like a slap, across her mouth, but it was too late. The one who hunted them already knew where they were. There was no point in staying quiet. In trying to hide. There was no point in running....

But, running was what they did. Cala's arm was grabbed and she was dragged through the trees, the shrubbery and vines ripping at her stockings and ankles, causing them to be cut, causing them to bleed. The maddened cackling started up again when they attempted to flee, and at least for Cala it seemed as if it were coming from all around them. There was no escaping this foe. No escaping the fate they had stepped right into.

After it became pointless to Cala's father to keep running he stopped, demanding that the creature that was after them reveal himself. Reveal himself he did, too. His appearance was frightening, and yet at the same time so chaotic that it was almost funny. Even though the situation was no laughing matter. It was then that Cala's father revealed to her that this was the man, no, the creature, that they were supposed to kill.

This revelation only lead to more maddened cackling. The vampire before them spoke words that sealed Cala's fate... he would give her a choice: she could either embrace the night, embrace the insanity, and live forever... or die here, first, as a means of torture to Cala's father.

She didn't want to die. She feared death, something she later found out that this creature knew. Knew and used against her openly, without regret.

She chose to live, to embrace this 'gift' he was willing to give her. To flee from death, to become immortal.

He was upon her before she knew it...

Later I would awaken to my late father's neck in the grasp of my newly formed fangs...


“Lucifer's bouncing balls, Cala, not again!"
Uh-oh. I squirmed, instinctively also trying to block Tony's body from his view. As if that made him any less dead.
"She was going to stab you," I said in my defense. "Look in her hand!"
He was looking at the ground near my feet instead. "Him, too?"
I nodded, sheepish. "He jumped me."
My sire just stared. "You're not a woman," he said finally. "You're the Grim Reaper!”

She hated him... at first. It had been the greatest insult to come into this new life with her first fresh memory being that she was the one who had killed the man she had called father for over four solid years. The man who had kept her fed, clothed, and who had taught her so many great things.

But, she couldn't or wouldn't dwell on it for long.

Cala was of great use to her sire, her skills and appearance assets that he used. He too killed people for a living, but more out of distaste than to earn any sort of money (though he robbed them blind when he did kill them, his words simply being "What use is it to them now? They're dead!").

Cala proved perfect bait for most of them: a young girl stalking the night, looking lost or afraid. It drew the attention of those he needed it too, and she was able to lure them to their doom and death without them ever expecting anything was wrong.

It was almost a nightly game of sorts.


"One corpse, extra crispy! Do I hear a thousand dollars?"

This game with her sire using her as bait went on for over one hundred years. They grew close after a while. No where near the father-daughter bond she had had with the man she had killed, but something along the lines of friends. They became... fond of each other.
But, fate wasn't kind again to Cala.

One night, while Cala was luring yet another target down a dark alley they were ambushed. A hunter had been paying close attention to them for months, mind entirely cut off due to the hunter not being human, and having great physic abilities. They hadn't known. They hadn't known what was going to befall them.

In a fight to the death Cala's sire was slain. Already Cala had become stronger than him, and that strength finally broke free and showed.

In a brutal bloodbath she slayed the hunter, destroying him completely and torturing him while doing so.


“No, I do my torturing in the dungeon like any other respectable castle owner!"

For hundreds of years after Cala slayed the man who had taken her sire from her she kept herself held up in the castle they had called home. She didn't venture out, didn't bother to do anything much at all. She became almost dormant. Like some sort of giant volcano that had just randomly gone to sleep: who would awake again one day violently.

She never had to go out for food: her wailing those first many days had caused all sorts of rumors to spring up about the supposedly vacant castle: and many teenagers and even adults dared each other to venture inside and have a peak.

They never left, to say the least.

She kept herself fed enough to stay alive and awake, but only just.

Then, one day she just stepped outside, and never looked back.

It might've been that she had got bored perhaps, or maybe it was the rumors that reached her ears. Rumors about a band of people who went around calling themselves Murder INC. Either way, that was who she joined, fully awakening into the newer world, and quickly familiarizing herself with all that there was to it.

She realized during this period of time that she wouldn't return to the way she had been. She wouldn't taint her sire's name by hiding away in their castle, waiting for her prey to come to her.

No...

She was going to give this world exactly what it was going to get...