From the top of a tree, Solomon was nodding off. The group had walked far too long and rested far too little. To top it off, Emilia insisted they pack up camp at the first sign of light in the sky. The sun hadn’t even come up until an hour later. The first thing he would do when he got back was take a bath, then sleep for as long as he could. Solomon had gotten bored of looking at the top of some stupid towers. He had activated his Byakugan, and was watching the group make their way through the castle. He couldn’t make out fine details like the adults could, but his Byakugan was better than others. He thought it might even be a little better than his sisters, but the only way to find out hurt quite a bit. He was busy letting these thoughts swim through his head, when he suddenly sat straight up on the branch.

  Emilia and the others had brought Shirai to a big room, then the princess went in with another man… Suddenly, as far as Solomon could tell, Shirai had… Exploded. No, that wasn’t right. Multiple things came out of her body. They were large and pointed, skewering directly through every single person in the room with her all at once. Then, as quickly as they shot out, they retracted back into her body… It all happened in a matter of seconds. If Solomon hadn’t been paying direct attention to it, he would have assumed the room was always like that. Then, Shirai sank directly into the ground beneath her, as if it was water. A few seconds later, Emilia pulled the door open.

  The entire event made Solomon's head suddenly spin. He watched the Chakra source of ‘Shirai’ move through the ground, directly under the entrance, and out into the forest. Solomon realised at that very moment that the danger the group was guarding Shirai from was standing right in their midst the entire time. She could have killed all of them at any point she wanted. Solomon split his attention on the castle, where Emilia and the others were suddenly being overwhelmed by the fortress guards, but they would escape in short order. He understood that it was all up to him to keep track of this assassin.

  Reaching for his pack, he only spent a few seconds moving aside a dirty shirt to get to his scouting equipment. Inside was a set of flares that he could shoot into the air. He slung his pack around his shoulder and began jumping from tree to tree, doing his best to keep up with the fleeing assassin. She could move just as fast under the ground as he could in the trees. His heart raced as he continued the chase. He couldn’t believe he was really doing this. After moving far enough, he aimed one hand into the air, and pulled the cord attached to a small cylinder with the other. A bright red flare shot its way up into the sky, leaving a trail of dark red smoke.

  —

  Inside the castle, Emilia, Otoha, and Jimpei were attempting to fend off the sudden attacking guards. All they had seen was blood spilling out of the lord's quarters, and no sight of the princess. They knew that one of the Hyuuga traitors had stayed outside, clearly a ploy to have them sneak onto the property and assassinate the lord and his council, while kidnapping the princess as a bonus. They would not let the Hyuuga bastards leave with their lives.

  “YOU HAVE BROKEN OUR TRUST! WE WILL HUNT DOWN ALL OF YOU SHINOBI DOGS!” One guard screamed, right before getting knocked out by a swift blow to the side of the head.

  “We can’t kill ANY of them if we are going to get out of this with our reputation intact.” Emilia tried to say to the others. It was difficult to get any words across without being interrupted by a blade or a flying arrow. At least none of these guards were former shinobi, Emilia thought.

  The panic was rising in the back of Emilia's head. It had only been two minutes, they needed to get out of here fast. Everything had gone horribly wrong. She wasn’t even sure how they could have succeeded in this mission, aside from figuring out that Shirai was an assassin from the beginning. That would have left them dead. Emilia tried to calm her thoughts as she dodged another blade thrust, sending another soldier falling limp to the ground with her own strike. The Hyuuga fighting style was uniquely suited to subduing individuals without killing them outright; Their technique involved targeting a combination of weak spots in the body with precise bursts of Chakra. From nerves, blood vessels, to the collection of pathways that carries Chakra through the body. A Hyuuga turns the body against itself, all thanks to the precision and clarity granted by the Byakugan.

  An arrow whizzed by Emilia's head, piercing an ear, causing her to call out in surprise. She looked up to see an arrangement of archers. The group had fought their way out of the inner castle and into the gardens, where the archers were free to line up and let their arrows loose. The barrage of arrows that rained down was too much to dodge. Arrows lodged in legs, abdomens, feet, and almost one head. Otoha looked up in surprise to see an arrow stopped right before it went straight through her neck, caught in mid air by Emilia. She turned to look at the archers with anger. They had not slain their lord. This was not their fault…

  That’s when she saw it. The trail of red smoke falling through the air, a distance above the trees. There were two of them, and as she watched, a third flare shot up into the air. It arced high into the air, and slowly fell, releasing a thick plume of smoke. Was Solomon following the assassin? Suddenly, Emilia did not care what happened to this castle. As far as she was concerned, everyone inside was less than the dirt she now stood on.

  The arrow in her hand snapped, then fell to the ground in pieces. The wood was not crushed. It was split perfectly in two. She walked toward the front gate, moving her hands up in a set of signs she had memorised for years. It was the first true technique she had mastered, her first step into Ninjutsu. In her mind, she imagined a great barrier of raging winds, which she moved to stand within. Her hands suddenly became the center of an invisible vortex, rapidly growing to encompass her entire body. Her long hair was pulled up and around her head in powerful eddies. She pushed her hands casually toward the front gate. The gate was dislodged in a violent explosion of wind, bending the metal outward.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Archers flew off the top of the wall from the powerful gust, which cracked and began to crumble. The explosion could be heard for miles. Emilia looked down at the arrow that lay in her leg, trying to figure out how to pull it out. Otoha and Jimpei were standing there next to Emilia, looking shocked and clamming up. Jimpei tried to pull himself together, but fell to the ground after trying to touch the arrow lodged in his abdomen. Emilia didn’t have time to wait for these two to pull themselves together, she had to get to her brother fast. After coming to a decision, she reached down, and broke the arrow in her leg at the shaft, trying to ignore the pain.

  —

  Solomon fired off his third and final flare. Luckily, Shirai had stopped moving in the ground, so he didn’t have to run any further. He stood, hidden in the canopy above, as Shirai moved up and rose from the ground like a mud monster. Her entire body was covered from head to toe in mud and leaves. As Solomon watched, the mud began to slough off of her body in clumps, slowly revealing her skin beneath. What was underneath the mud was not Shirai. It was still a girl, maybe the same age, but with stark white hair and tan skin, and her body was covered in a series of tight robes.

  She reached for the ground and appeared to pick something up. It took Solomon a few seconds to understand what it was, but when he did, the manner of attack suddenly made much more sense. She picked up a piece of bark from a tree, shook the mud off of it, and threw it off into a bush. As Solomon watched this scene unfold, the reality of his situation finally set in. He had just followed a highly trained assassin out, alone, into the middle of nowhere. She was getting ready to leave the scene. He had just figured out what she was. As he came to this realisation, there was a thundering boom somewhere behind him. The distant explosion startled Solomon, and he almost slipped off of the branch he was standing on. He quickly readjusted himself, then focused back down at the ground to assess the situation. An immediate problem made itself apparent. The assassin was gone.

  Solomon quickly scanned the area around himself as fast as he could. There were plenty of details he could miss, but one thing he could not miss was Chakra. To the Byakugan, Chakra might as well be a light in a cave. He began to move at the same time, not risking staying in the same spot. He found the assassin within seconds, moving up and through the very tree he was just standing on. Right after he landed on a second branch, the spot where he had been standing was suddenly overtaken by giant spikes… Of wood. The assassin moved out of the tree and onto the branch, walking forward casually. She looked around for a second until she spotted Solomon. Her face was indifferent as their eyes met.

  “You saw me?” She asked.

  Solomon did not respond.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. You know who I am?” She asked again.

  Solomon hesitated. Could he get out of this alive? The thought struck him then. Is this really how he dies? Fear began to creep into his mind. He knew next to nothing about the Senju clan, other than that they are incredibly dangerous and deadly to anyone that fights them. His parents once told him horror stories of members of the Senju clan who would go on a psychotic rampage, to make him and his siblings behave. He thought of Kotetsu dragging a stick into the tent one time and hitting him with it. He thought of Emilia.

  “Why didn’t you just kill us?” Solomon asked.

  She paused before answering.

  “You were not the target.” She stated.

  “You only kill your targets?” Solomon asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “What about the people in that inn? Or the home? What about that family? Did you kill them?” Solomon threw at her.

  She didn’t say anything for several seconds. After the earlier explosion reverberated through the forest, the entire area was left void of all sound. It was deafening.

  “Yes.”

  The words hit him like a hammer. He had expected the answer, but it still hurt him. He didn’t quite know why.

  “Why?” He asked.

  She looked him in the eyes.

  “The same reason I must now kill you.”

  While the pair were talking, she had done something to the branch he was standing on. Solomon didn’t understand that a Senju doesn’t need to explicitly touch a tree to control it. The entire branch suddenly curved inward, bending up and straight through Solomon, piercing straight through his chest with savage force.

  —

  Emilia had moved as fast as she could. But even at her fastest, she wouldn’t have made it in time. She found his body at the bottom of a tree. She could barely look at the broken body for more than a few seconds before spewing her breakfast. She collapsed to the ground, falling roughly. All she could do was look down at the body for several minutes. After a while, the voices of Otoha and Jimpei came through the forest. The armored soldiers had left them alone after Emilia rearranged the architecture. The two limped into view, stopping at the sight of the body on the ground. They both ceased talking. They all stayed like that for a while, sitting, standing, watching. Waiting. Almost ten minutes went by, when Emilia slowly got to her feet, walked over to the body, and began pulling her tent kit out of her bag. She began to wrap the body. Her hands trembled as they slowly worked. Jimpei and Otoha moved to help after a minute, all of them working to place the light body into the tarp.