The Crimson Shadow
The air hung heavy in the meeting room, thick with the unspoken weight of the orphanage massacre. The Hokage, a stoic and weathered man, sat at the head of the table, his gaze unreadable. Beside him, Jiraiya, a man of many talents, fidgeted nervously, his usual carefree demeanor absent.
"The injuries…" the Hokage began, his voice low, "They are unlike anything I've ever seen. Clean cuts, precise, as if made by a blade."
"A blade?" Danzo, ever the skeptic, scoffed. "What kind of blade could cleave a man in two with such ease?"
"No ordinary blade, that's for sure," Kakashi, the stoic Jounin, chimed in. "The precision, the lack of any other marks... It's as if the victims were sliced apart by some invisible force."
The Hokage nodded, his eyes narrowing. "A force beyond our understanding."
"That's all well and good, Hokage-sama," Jiraiya interjected, his voice rising in frustration, "but we need answers, not theories! The village is in a panic. The exams are just around the corner…"
"The exams will continue," the Hokage declared, his voice unwavering. "The village will not crumble under fear."
A young villager, trembling, pushed through the crowd gathered at the back of the room. "Hokage-sama! I saw her… the woman with the red hair and yellow eyes. She was near the orphanage just before… before the… the awful thing happened."
A gasp rippled through the room. The Hokage's eyes narrowed. It was a report they had received before, but dismissed as a hallucination. The woman with red hair and yellow eyes was the subject of a missing person's report, but she had blue eyes, not yellow.
"Could she have been…," Danzo began, his voice laced with suspicion.
"No," the Hokage interrupted, his gaze hardening. "We've investigated the disappearance. There is no proof of foul play. We will not be swayed by rumors."
'But Hokage-sama,' Jiraiya argued, 'what about the red hair? It's been confirmed by multiple witnesses. This woman is connected somehow.'
The Hokage stood, his presence commanding attention. "We will investigate this woman, but we will not rush to judgment. It is too early to point fingers. Remember, we are not dealing with ordinary criminals. We are dealing with an unknown force, a force that can cleave a man in two with an invisible blade."
The meeting ended with a sense of dread hanging in the air. The Hokage's words hung heavy: an unknown force, an invisible blade. No one knew the true nature of the threat they faced, no one except the woman with red hair and the eyes of a demon. The Crimson Shadow, as she was now known, had brought terror to Konohagakure, and no one knew what darkness she would unleash next.