Being A Kage's Daughter

The Death of a Teammate

Maiki

I felt another groan escape my lips as Ichiro once again elbowed me in the rips. I turned my head and sent a scowl his way. I had bruises up and down my body from our pillow fight yesterday. It felt as if they had put metal blocks into those pillows instead of that soft down they usually stuff it with.

"Hey, I think we're here," said Naomi. I gave her a confused look.

"What do you mean, you think," I asked. She shrugged at me.

"Exactly what I said. It's so foggy out here. I can't see five feet in front of me," she exclaimed. I sighed.

"Haruka, can you hand me the map," I asked politely.

"Here ya go, Maiki," Haruka said, pulling out the rolled up piece of parchment from her bag and handed it to me. I nodded my thanks and opened it up.

I looked at it closely. Before we left Father had taught me how to read a map so that we wouldn't get lost.

"Okay, so we're right around here," I said, pointing to a spot in the map, " and The Land of Waves is right here, which isn't all that far away," I told them, rolling back up the map. I tossed the scroll behind me into my bag as Akane started talking.

"Exactly how far away are we," Akane asked. I looked up at the clouds for a moment. Well, at least I tried to. The stupid fog was in the way. A sigh left my lips. In the Sun Village we never had this problem.

"I don't know, about a mile or two east," I mumbled, still looking up. How I wish I could see the sky.

"Well, we better start moving then," said Kohaku. All of us nodded in agreement and started our trek back up again.

"Hey, look at that! The fog is clearing," said Naomi happily. I felt my eyes widen in surprise. I wonder if- no. Just because I wanted to see the sky doesn't mean that I made the fog drift away.

I tilted my head back and caught a glimpse of the clear blue sky. At once it seemed all my worries floated away with the clouds. The sky always seemed to be able to do that.

In the corner of my eye I saw a hazy grey cloud drift upward.

"Hey, is that-" asked Ichiro. I cut him off.

"It's smoke," I said, the surprise evident in my voice. Following the path of the grey cloud downward, it disappeared behind a cluster of large trees.

"It's most probably smoke from a campfire. Someone's close by, and we don't know if it's an enemy or just some passerby. What do you guys think, should we go check them out?" I asked them.

Seeing how they all gave me a firm nod of their heads, I turned in the direction of the smoke. I looked behind me to make sure they were all ready to go. Noting the were, I leaped from my spot on the ground and landed on a tree branch not to far away.

"Alright guys, follow my lead and stay quiet, we don't want to be the ones caught," I explained.

Not waiting for a reply, I jumped off the branch and ninja leaped from tree to tree in the smokes direction.

About five minutes later I silently made the stop order. Once everyone came to a successful halt, I crouched down and made my way to the edge of my tree.

Peering through the leaves, I caught sight of an elderly man with greying hair at his temples. He looked like a nice enough man, but looks can be deceiving. I've learned that from experience.

"You children can go ahead and come out," called the old man. My eyes widened in surprise. He obviously wasn't just your regular old traveler. I looked at all my comrades and felt a burst of pride when no one moved a muscle.