The Naka River flowed swiftly through the underbrush, here little more than a stream. Nearly indistinguishable from the mighty, many-limbed serpent that coursed through many places in the land of fire, the river here picked and prodded almost deliberately through the landscape, every few meters catching the light from the afternoon sun and casting it back in prismatic gleams. Shinako followed it away from the land of sound, toward the Hidden Leaf Village, just as she had for the past two days. She and the river had many qualities in common.

Aside from speed, strength, and a singular, determined heading, both were more than they appeared on the surface. Shinako knew the truth about the river here, in the places near the village just like it, and had known since she was a small girl. The Sound shinobi pursuing her had learned the hard way. On the glassy surface, the water seemed almost placid, serene. However, two days ago, during the altercation that had triggered her flight, the ripping currents beneath had dragged a strong Chunin boy away, almost certainly to his death. Since then, Shinako had prayed with everything in her that she would not come across his body as she fled. So far she had been lucky.

By her best count, there was an entire squad after her. The first, the leader, had fallen into the river attempting to tackle one of her clones. All personal appearances, and their skill in tracking, indicated that they were either Genin or very poorly trained Chunin themselves. The Hidden Sound Village, to her knowledge, had been suppressed by the more powerful villages, through a systematic implementation of misinformation and sabotage. It was that same subtle warfare that brought Shinako out into the wilderness, and its effects were becoming apparent. The Sound shinobi were disorganized, erratic, and borderline ineffective. A Jounin would make a moment's work of them. To a Chunin, these qualities only made them all the more dangerous. More than one clumsy blow had left Shinako bruised before her daring escape.

As per her orders, she was carrying false information, and had devised a plan to deliver it into the hands of the enemy. The false meeting in the Land of Sound had gone off without a hitch, and a relatively inexperienced squad had picked up her trail. Then, in a sudden flash of skill, she had shown them she was dangerous, eliminating their leader and escaping. This way, they would not be eager to fight her once the scroll she carried changed hands. According to her plans, she had been slowing her pace incrementally, saving her energy to stage a final sprint to make the entire endeavor more convincing. If her calculations were correct, it would only be a matter of hours before the young men caught up with her. By then, in the darkness, and on the banks of the Naka River, Shinako would be completely within her element.

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There are nights that settle over the land as though the daylight never daunted their approach. These thick blankets often catch the weary traveler off-guard, unsheltered, and unprepared. There is a strange and cunning sentience about them, and one often gets the feeling that a moment's inattention, out in that sudden, sly darkness, could spell disaster. Tonight was one of those nights.

Crouching low by the riverbed, Shinako scooped a handful of the thick, rich mud from a clear pool. She applied it liberally to her face, neck, and arms. It was a trick she had learned from her father, to keep the moonlight from reflecting off of her pale skin, and to keep the stinging insects off of her. The dark, earthy smell contrasted starkly with the scented waters and perfumes she was accustomed to wearing while at home; it was familiar and welcomed all the same. Her step-mother had always described make-up as war paint. This was not one bit different from that.

Just before the the sun had set, Shinako had caught sight of two of her pursuers, and guessed at the location of the third. They had been startled to catch sight of her; boys of no more than fledgling teenage years. It had given her more than enough space to escape, and were she truly headed for the Hidden Leaf Village she could have done so easily, letting ANBU intercept her clumsy trackers, but she had lingered, manufactured mistakes, and now she could hear them circling, triangulating.

A campfire meant to lure them into an ambush lay in a pit about fifty meters from her current position. She had to make the battle to come convincing enough for them to believe they had won. It would require injuring at least one of them, though Shinako knew she would not be able to bring herself to kill them. Luckily, this task would not require undue bloodshed.

In the strange way that often happens in war, Shinako had come to possess a certain affection for her foes. Her time in the past few days had often required an almost surgical precision and attention to detail, but in the odd moments in which she could allow her mind to wander, she had often wondered about them. Perhaps they had families, friends, loved ones. It was easy to imagine that, were circumstance reversed, she would have taken up arms to follow the devil from the Land of Fire into the deep, dark woods. There was a certain safety in believing that they were just as afraid as she would be.

As these thoughts played across the darkest pathways of the young kunoichi's mind, her eyes scanned the surrounding scene for signs of the Sound Ninja. Every now and then she would catch the glint of a Kunai knife, the subtle bending of a shadow that might escape the notice of someone untrained in Inton. All three were converging on the decoy site, and soon the time would be right for Shinako to strike.

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The dead man's eyes were almost as hateful in death as they had been in life. His broken neck cast them at an unnatural angle in the murky darkness, but they focused, almost deliberately, on their final target. They saw and were seen, if at all, only in the light of a dying fire, the flash of a knife, the spray of water in the cascading moonlight. The scene ended, as it began, in shadow. Horrors beget horrors, that live, in their own way, only as precursors to the next horror.

Shinako's panting cut through the air as she sprinted and leaped through the branches of the trees, once again following the river. Between breaths she stopped to listen for signs of pursuit, hearing none. Her torn sash clung almost dutifully to her waist. Her eyes darted back and forth in the darkness for signs of movement. Only the dull ache in her left hand kept her rooted in the moment, stopping her mind from wandering out into the darkness and creating monsters.

The Kunoichi was relatively sure that the hand was broken, but she kept the muscles tight anyway. The information drop had gone well, but part of that success had been in making her eventual retreat as convincing as possible. Her Taijutsu skills were rusty, but her distracted and tired foes had been relatively easy to deal with. The hand, in fact, had been broken against the cheek of one of the determined boys. The other was still sticky with blood from the Kunai knife which she had driven into the shoulder of the next, while the other had attempted to grab her from behind and she had pretended to accidentally drop the scroll.

Upon seeing it, the young men, with a relieved change in attention and energy, shifted their focus to the information they were after. Shinako had shoved one of them in the melee, sending him back-first onto the fire, extinguishing it in a spray of dust, ash, and embers. Then she had run, and had not stopped since. If her orienteering was correct, she would be within the Hidden Leaf Village by the early hours of the morning, just before the dawn. Then she would be able to report her success to her captain.

There was a certain feeling of relief in having the deed done with, and with so little harm to show for it. She felt for the squad leader, but there was precious little time to think of him. She could not let her fear and apprehension of death paralyze her in these final moments before she was truly safe. She had been warned, before undertaking her first B-Rank mission, that she was entering a whole new world of death and deceit. However, despite the cautionary tales and stern briefings, Shinako couldn't help but feel that the reality of what she had just done, the world she had just entered, was something entirely different from the sanitized, theoretical, and necessary violence of the training rooms.

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