Fear, Tracks and Shelter

__________ POV Narration __________ 

Yue panted as she continued to flee at full speed across the borders of the Land of Iron.

She had done something she couldn't take back. She had finally snapped.

In her mind, she had done it for a good reason at the very least, but even she couldn't bring herself to say that she had done it the right way. 

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. 

She had just woken up that day, realized that Ken was away, and saw it as a chance to run away. To seek out her own fortunes in that wide world.

To escape from the constant punishment she was incurring due to what she saw as a small mistake done in the past. 

She made sure to act like the perfect student even after all of those years of being held back. She tried her best to make it look like she regretted her words back then, and that she was sorry.

But Ken, despite having no eyes, could see right through her pretences. He knew not to trust what she expressed outwardly, instead, he was constantly peering into her soul with his inhuman 'gaze'. 

It was unnerving to Yue, especially since she could feel it sometimes...

As long as she was within that brotherhood, she was never going to escape his gaze, she was never going to escape his punishment.

But she had failed to consider what to do after escaping from the Dark Brotherhood...

In the first place, she hadn't thought that she'd get that far. She assumed that the others would summon Ken as soon as she left. 

The Blind Monster was not someone she could run away from without giving it her all. So for a few days now, she hadn't stopped even to sleep.

She had covered quite a distance on her own, but even then she felt that it was not enough. It was almost as if she could constantly feel his 'gaze' on her back, even though she knew that he was nowhere near her...

At least she hoped he was nowhere near. She couldn't sense him. 

But aside from running away, she hadn't made much of a plan. She couldn't go home. 

Her father would most certainly not stand by her when learning of what she had done. 

She may have been the apple of her father's eye, but he had already shown that he was not against punishing her if she did something bad... 

And now she had done something much worse than just 'bad'. She had betrayed the Brotherhood, something that likely would warrant her death. 

Harming Tosho was not something she had wanted to do, but she had realized too late what her escape through the walls would do to the traps she had sprung. 

She could only hope that the damage she had done was not grave enough. Tosho was still considered Ken's right-hand man at the end of the day.

The only reason she had even managed to trap him was because he simply was not expecting her to. 

If he had truly been trying to, he likely could have harmed her even whilst trapped. There were certain jutsu that required very little movement at the end of the day. 

But he didn't want to injure her. 

Yue was, at the end of the day, one of the children of the Brotherhood in Tosho's eyes. But more importantly, she was the princess of the Land of Iron.

This meant that harming her directly would mean breaking any relations between the Dark Brotherhood and the Land of Iron. And Tosho didn't want to do such a thing without Ken's specific orders. 

Ken could also assume as much.

Whilst the princess was still dashing through the woods, sprinting with fervour whilst doing her best to run as far as possible from the Brotherhood and Ken's influence, the Blind Monster was only just getting started on his pursuit. 

And his pursuit was a lot calmer than one would expect.

Through all of the guilt he felt at failing to notice how quickly she was spiralling, and through all of the anger he held at her actions, he could still see things clearly. 

His mind could still think, and make out solutions to the problems he was facing. That was what he was best at. 

In the end, it all centred on something that he had also struggled to learn in his past life and something that he had taught to the children as well in his years. 

'Each situation in one's life can be treated the same as an assassination. At its very bones, assassination is just problem-solving. 

Situations can differ, and things can get complex, but at the base, it all follows the same process...'

The Blind Moster breathed out a bit of steam as he walked outside of the village, his mind returning to that old lesson he had taught himself... 

'You assess what you have, you identify your opponent and the situation, and you form a plan with those factors in mind as well as any other outside factors that 'could' come into play... And only after that do you act.'

Ken slowly wandered through the expansive snowy woods around the compound. 

'There is no place for emotions when problem-solving...' 

Each step he took left little to no mark in the snow, each gait of his was enough to cover a wide distance as he trusted his nose to search for an all-so-familiar scent...

'That part was something that she could never quite get right, no matter how much she tried...' 

Emotions were something that the Princess seemed to rely on heavily, it was how she could portray her art... But those emotions also led to other mistakes. 

No matter how skilled Yue was, she always had issues of her own, issues that made her sloppy.

For one, she couldn't bring herself to give up on her favourite perfume. 

It was an extremely high-quality one that she had been using in her youth as well.

She would put it on at all times unless she was on missions, it was to the point where her skin was almost always smelling like that perfume.

The Blind Assassin had been around the young girl for long enough to recognize that smell, he could tell it apart from anything in the world.

But how could he feel the smell of something that had passed by a few days ago?

Well... Ken's 4 senses had long since surpassed any living being, not just humans.

He had long since become what was essentially the pinnacle. He now was Mother Nature's greatest masterpiece, a perfectly evolved creature. 

Even as the faint fragments of that perfume wafted through the air so faintly that even a dog wouldn't have been able to pick them up, he could still follow that barely existing thread. 

Even if it was carried by the wind at times, taking different twists and turns from the girl's journey, the Blind Assassin could still trace her steps.

And the moment he fully caught onto that thread, the muscles in his body all flexed and wriggled underneath his skin. 

With an inhuman surge in strength, he dashed through the forest, whizzing past all trees as his figure cut through the wind, far exceeding the speed of sound. 

But he didn't stop there. As he felt the wind resistance on his skin, he decided to up the ante a bit more.

His face, as well as the rest of his body, was quickly covered by shining dark-green scales. 

His speed had easily doubled now that he had entered his Scaled Sage Form. 

He already knew how fast Yue was, and he could guess how far she had gotten. 

The trail of perfume was a bit weak, but he did eventually run into other clues... 

In her hurry, Yue had gotten careless. As the Blind Monster also found a strand of her light-blonde hair sticking to the trunk of a tree, frozen there. 

It only confirmed to the Blind Monster that he was headed in the right direction. 

And as he was slowly picking up the pace whilst, on her tracks, the princess was slowly but surely getting less and less panicked.

Her mind was starting to clear up, her breath was starting to catch up to her... And she could finally find some clarity in the madness that was in her mind.

She knew that her current strategy was not sustainable. She was not going to make it too much further, and her Teacher would likely be able to catch up to her if she rested.

In the end, she only really had one choice to make... And that was to find shelter. Not physical of course. 

But shelter from the clutches of the Dark Brotherhood and Ken. Shelter from responsibility.

A place that even Ken would hopefully not want to make enemies out during their current political climate.

The problem was that there weren't all that many places to fit that description... 

Or so the disgraced princess thought before she corrected herself as she remembered of a certain organization that held significant strength... 

'... I guess there's one place I could go to. One that maybe could shield me from the Dark Brotherhood...' 

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Hello, hope you liked the chapter!

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