A tiny red hair was pacing through the forest, bouncing from one branch to another, making as little noise as she could. Her light feet caused such a tiny effect that it resembled a light summer breeze causing the  branches to shiver. It was nightime already and it seemed that the forest was in a deep sleep itself with no presence of any human at all. However, the moon  was almost in the phase of making a perfect form of a circle and the light it emitted went through the thick leafage of trees. This light illuminated huge parts of the forest revealing all kinds goods dwelling down there. This caused a nasty feeling of uneasiness for this tiny red hair as she had no luxury of being revealed in this bright light of full moon. Or maybe that nasty feeling was coming from whole different source.

The girl kept turning her head back, scanning the scenery by sudden rolls of  her ghostly eyes. Every little noise that she emitted causing the branches shiver made her shiver herself. The decent ammount of fear lingered around. It seemed as the red hair was afraid of her own shadow and  that affected her movement in slight manner. There were some moments when the tiny moan or an unexpected „Ah“ got out through her lips, which could do a lot of damage if heard. And the worst part was, that shadow she was afraid of, was getting to her very quickly and she needed to make herself out of its sight somehow.

“Oh...would they stop it already...They have been playing like this all night.“  An exausting thought appeared in her mind again. However, the sudden turn of events disturbed her mind from thinking for a second.  The girl’s heart started pumping a huge amount of adrenaline as she stepped and stumbled on the last branch of the last tree in the forest. The adrenaline flew in every tip of each finger causing the red hair lose her coordination for a while. She jumped down in reflex and landed in this huge field with a wide river crossing it in front of her eyes. That only meant that she came to the border already, only this water was parting her from reaching the safe destination and maybe getting rid of those annoying shadows behind.

She tugged her kimono a little, which was now contacting the ground as she took her steps towards the river. With no hesitation of getting her expensive silk kimono all wet, the red hair stepped directly into the water deciding not to use the water walking technique. That decision was thought through very carefully just the minute the girl landed, as she did not want to waste any more of her chakra, which was running low due to speeding more than she would tend to use on a normal travel. At that time it seemed like a perfect idea.

The girl’s body was going deeper and deeper into cold water until it wrapped her red hair completely. It was a little too cold for her liking and the whole body was intensified so much it was even hard to move the muscles properly. That was unexpected. However, in this kind of situation all those discomforting things had to be ignored for the bigger purpose. With each minute the girl got short of air, she would drag her extremely stiff body up and take the biggest gasp of air she could. However, the girl was starting to feel her body getting heavier and that minute underwater getting shorter by each time she did this ritual. Besides that, as much as she wished for the tracking shadows to disappear, the red hair still sensed some nasty chakra around. Experiencing the hardest travel of all times, the river bank in front of her eyes gave her some hope though. However, after the first step out of the freezing water, the hope turned into huge disappointment in no time.

In the end, even if the girl had successfully crossed the border, it was not a success at all. She was all drenched in cold water, her hair and silk kimono were wet and she had nothing else to change into. Besides that, the thing that annoyed her most was that she consumed more energy than she would have allowed herself to and the biggest effort she could make now is to slowly head forward. And, as a juicy cherry on top of this messed up cake, rested the fact that those nasty shadows she wanted to get rid of so much will be keeping her company a little bit longer after all.  As she gazed back one more time, three men were already making their first steps on the surface of the water.

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WC 803