The girl ignored them, slamming her hands onto the rogue ninja's chest. "Ice Release Secret Technique: Dragon Hail Impalement!"
The rogue ninja's eyes went wide. He slowly sank to his knees. A massive, star-shaped block of ice protruded from his back. All of his internal organs must have been turned to slush.
The girl stood, breathing heavily. It took her a long while to recover.
She retrieved her tachi, cut off the rogue ninja's head, and sealed it in a scroll to exchange for the bounty.
For days now, she had been taking on missions like a madwoman. If there were no missions available, she would find someone to challenge. Only by walking the line between life and death could she temporarily forget her loneliness.
"Time to find another mission... This is so boring... My power is growing fast, which is nice. A bit dangerous, but..."
She licked her lips. "I think I'm starting to like this feeling..."
***
"What?! There are no suitable missions left?!"
The girl slammed her hands on the counter, glaring at the clerk.
Incidentally, she had been moving from place to place while doing missions and was now far from her original exchange. This clerk wasn't the young man from before, but a disheveled-looking woman in her twenties who reeked of alcohol.
"Th-That's right..." the woman slurred. "Some mission-crazy freak has been clearing out all the mid-level missions. All that's left are high-level ones and some really low-level stuff."
...*A mission-crazy freak... She couldn't possibly mean me... ahem... Lovely weather we're having today...*
The girl looked around for a moment before lowering her head again. "This is a problem... No suitable missions... A- and B-rank missions are suicide for me right now... Guess I'll have to settle for a D-rank for now..."
Muttering to herself, she scanned the mission list. After a while, she looked up at the woman slumped over the counter. "This one. Wiping out the mountain bandits!"
***
Night. Dressed in a black, form-fitting stealth suit, the girl knocked out a few sentries and slipped into the heart of the bandit camp.
"Tch, if the mission brief hadn't said the bandit leader might be a ninja, and if I wouldn't lose a huge chunk of the bounty if even one of them escaped, I wouldn't be going through all this trouble. I'd just tear through the whole place..." she grumbled, though her movements were anything but slow.
It was almost midnight. Though campfires still burned, everyone except the outer sentries was asleep, even the patrolling guards.
Holding her breath, the girl slipped into a tent. She looked at the loudly snoring bandit on the bed, her eyes cold. She crept closer and slit his throat with a single motion. The sleeping bandit woke with a start, clutching his neck, trying in vain to stop the gushing blood...
A faint "hiss" escaped his throat, but that was the extent of his death throes.
As the light faded from his eyes, a flicker of hesitation appeared in the girl's, but it vanished just as quickly.
Her face an icy mask, she moved to the next tent and repeated the process. Watching life after life fade away, she felt something inside her shatter...
This was different from her other missions. Those targets were ninja, people who had long made peace with death. Touye herself was prepared for it. But these men were different. They weren't ninja. They might just be people forced into this life by circumstance. The girl didn't know how many of them were innocent, but right now, they were just lambs to the slaughter...
She entered another tent, but what she found inside made her pause. This tent was different. There were no bandits. Instead, there was a large cage, and locked inside was a little girl!
*What the hell is this? Don't tell me the bandit leader is a lolicon?*
The girl stared at the girl in the cage, unsure what to do. Just then, the caged girl suddenly looked up, her red eyes meeting the girl's, but she said nothing.
Touye felt uneasy under the girl's direct gaze. After an awkward moment, she crouched down. "Excuse me, are you a bandit, too?"
The caged girl shook her head.
Touye then asked, "Were you captured by them?"
The girl still shook her head.
Now Touye was stumped. Not a bandit, and not a captive. What was going on?
"I came with them myself..."
"Oh... you came... What?! You came on your own?"
Touye felt like her brain was short-circuiting. Who would willingly seek out bandits?
"Uh... so you can talk... I thought... hehe..."
The girl scratched her head in embarrassment. The girl's voice was very soft, and Touye had already cleared out the nearby area, so she wasn't worried about being discovered.
"So, why are you with the bandits?"
The girl lowered her head, her bangs hiding her expression. "Because... I was hungry..."
"Huh?" Touye thought she must have misheard.
"They said if I went with them, I'd have something to eat," the girl said softly, her head still down.
Hearing this, Touye first wanted to laugh, then felt a wave of pity. Seeing the girl huddled in the cage, her heart ached.
*How much has this poor child suffered?* she wondered. She herself, with the mind and soul of an adult, had struggled so much to survive. What about this girl? She looked even younger than Haku. Touye couldn't even imagine the cruelty she must have endured to stay alive...
"Come with me!"
The words escaped her lips in a rush of emotion.
The girl with the bowed head snapped her head up, her crimson eyes fixed on Touye. Touye finally got a clear look at her. The girl was undoubtedly a budding beauty. Though she had yet to mature, her fair skin, crimson eyes, and long hair shimmering in the faint moonlight all hinted that she would grow up to be a peerless beauty.
The girl continued, "I can't promise you happiness. All I can say is, if I have food, you will never go hungry! So, come with me!"
*Drip...*
A single teardrop fell to the ground, followed by a second, and a third. The caged girl's body trembled slightly. "Jun... Akayo Jun..."
"What?" The girl didn't understand.
"My name. It's my name. I'm Akayo Jun. You can call me Jun, sis!"
The girl smiled back. "I'm Yuki Touye. You can call me Touye, or Yo. Whatever you like. But it seems my disguise isn't very good if you saw through it right away..."