Outlander: Found on the Path of Life. Part 1

Chapter 1. The Silver-Haired Stranger

The girl was dragging herself slowly, as if in a trance, along the road. Her long white hair was tangled, her once exquisite dress messed up, the hem torn in some places. Just below the chest, a crimson spot, barely noticeable against the background of red silk, spread out.

Even when four men appeared in her way, this did not save her from detachment. When they almost met and frankly nasty grins appeared on the men's faces, it would have been too late to do anything.

The men surrounded the girl and began to offer their help in a mockingly-sympathetic way: such a fine young lady, they said, and all alone? At that moment, the girl finally seemed to have recovered senses and looked at her 'virtues' with a slightly clearer gaze of golden eyes. Squeaking something unintelligible, she tried to slip past, but realized that she was trapped from all sides. It was at this point that she finally realized what was happening, and an expression of quiet panic flashed across her face.

The 'virtues' livened up even more, two of them picked the girl up by the arms, after which the whole party turned off the road into the depths of the forest. The girl was choking with fear and could not make a sound anymore. Men no longer thought necessary concealing their intentions, openly discussing that the girl could be sold well, especially if she was a virgin. That was what they were going to find out, in fact, — and it would do no harm to grope a little as well.

And only when the knife first cut the dress deftly from the collar almost to the navel, and shortly after — the light bandeau underneath it, did the girl finally manage to scream, causing the men to laugh approvingly.

☙ ❦ ❧

Kakashi himself would not have been able to explain what made him slow down and listen, and then turn away from the usual path. He was already a short distance from Konoha, the long and complicated mission had exhausted him, and he was very much looking forward to at least a couple of days' rest. And thereafter they might try and assign one more group of Academy graduates to him — unless, of course, he would be forced to send the newly-minted genins back to the Academy again, like the previous ones...

He did not hear anything, no matter how much he listened, but experience had taught him to pay attention to manifestations of intuition, so he carefully moved in the direction where he was drawn. At last, when he heard a woman's scream, he realised that his intuition had not failed him again.

☙ ❦ ❧

Arina couldn't quite wrap her head around how it could have come to this. At first she came to her senses in some strange place, with a wound in her chest, got out of the building engulfed in flames at the limit of her strength, now this... It all looked like a really bad dream, but in that case the realism was astonishing. Strange men dressed as if they had stepped off the pages of a book about feudal Japan. But at the same time, she understood them perfectly. And it seemed like the continuation of the 'dream' was going to be even worse than its beginning.

She was standing between two men who were holding her hands, squeezing her wrists painfully. The slit dress slipped off her shoulders and bared her breasts. The men guffawed and egged each other on. The moment when the hand of one of them had already grabbed her breast, forcing the girl to squeeze her eyes shut, beat frantically and scream again, an imperturbable voice suddenly interjected:

"That's enough. You've had some fun, now let her go."

The whole group turned and stared at the newcomer. It was a statuary and slender man with a wild crop of silver hair, tied on his forehead with a headband, for some reason rakishly pulled over his left eye. The lower part of the face was also hidden under a mask, so from the whole face only the right eye was visible. He was wearing a strange outfit, consisting of a dark uniform, over which was a vest with a stiff collar. On his hands he wore fingerless gloves with metal plates. He also wore a backpack, a belt with numerous cases and pockets, under the backpack — another rather roomy bag and a short scabbard, and a holster bag on his right hip. His shins were wrapped in bandage, and he wore unusual-looking shoes with open toes and heels.

The man leisurely took off his backpack and leaned it against a tree, after which he looked at them again with a calm, even somewhat bored look and nonchalantly put his hands in his pockets, as if he had met some friends. Out of the corner of her fear-clouded consciousness Arina noted that at the same time the man radiated almost more danger than her tormentors. And he wasn't afraid to go up against four people alone, although he was definitely inferior to at least two of them in the weight category.

"You'd better be going your way," the one who had been groping Arina said arrogantly. "If life is precious to you..."

His friends laughed nastily. The stranger narrowed his only visible eye badly.

"I suggest that you do that yourselves — after you release the girl, of course. In that case, you may even remain unharmed."

"Do you hear what he's saying?" His friends guffawed again. "I think we need to teach this wanker a lesson on how to not interfere with mature men."

The two men holding Arina let go of her, and she immediately sank to the ground, convulsively pressing her hands to her chest: her legs were giving way. There was no question of running away. Three men headed towards the white-haired stranger, who did not even move a muscle, while the fourth, clearly the leader of this group, on the contrary, stepped back, giving the initiative to his accomplices.

What happened next was more like a scene from an action movie. The white-haired man took a step forward and spun deftly, something flashed, following which the first two, who flew forward by inertia and were already behind him, collapsed to the ground and never moved again. Another subtle movement — and the third man was also lying on the ground, without so much as a sound. Two strangely shaped blades spun with flair in the hands of the stranger and froze.

Arina stared with wide eyes. Instead of relief, another wave of panic rolled over her: she had not seen dead people until today, not to mention being killed so pitilessly and effectively in front of her very eyes... She wanted to scream from the newly surging terror, but suddenly she was pulled by her hair and the next moment she was up on her feet again, her chin cocked up. She felt something cold and sharp: there was a knife at her throat.

"Stop or I'll cut her open," the only man left alive barked.

The white-haired man stopped. He sighed disapprovingly.

"You still don't get it who you're dealing with? If you kill her, I will definitely have no reason to let you live. For the last time, I suggest letting the girl go."

Arina felt that the hands of the man holding her were trembling. The blade pressed even harder against the skin.

"Stay back!" the man screamed. Blood started flowing lightly down the girl's neck. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes.

"Well, there's nothing to be done," the white-haired man said and lifted the headband hiding his left eye. He then looked at them with both eyes.

At that moment, Arina opened her eyes as well and her gaze met his for a moment. She caught her breath in terror again. While the man's right eye was quite ordinary, dark grey, almost black, the iris of the left eye was piercingly red, alien — from fear it even seemed to her that the eye was slightly glowing. The sinister picture was intensified by a scar splitting the skin around the eye vertically.

"You!.." the man holding her obviously had some kind of enlightenment. It seemed to Arina that the white-haired man even rolled his eyes slightly — like, man, are you slow.

The girl did not understand what happened after that, but the next moment she was doused with something warm and moist — she realised that it was blood — and the grip holding her weakened abruptly. The last thing she saw before consciousness graciously left her, was up close the eerie eye of the stranger who had caught her instead. The question whether she was alright reached her while she was already rapidly falling into the fog of oblivion.