Chapter 5 : Keep its cool
It was past midnight and the month of December had just started so it wasn't uncommon to get a lot of snow and for temperatures to be below zero, especially at night.
However, these extreme conditions hadn't prevented a figure from finding itself at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, in the dark and with snow up to its knees as it was trying to warm itself by rubbing its arms with its gloved hands.
"Where the hell is Moody ?" Akira thought bitterly while scanning the surroundings to see only the movement of the snowflakes falling from the sky. "I've been waiting for him for twenty minutes already. I thought he was more punctual than that."
But she had barely finished complaining in her head when the latter finally emerged from behind a tree with his limping step. And he didn't apologize in the least for being late. It was probably to test her patience, or her resistance to harsh weather conditions or simply because he didn't care about having made her wait indefinitely.
"Let's not waste a second." He barked while Akira raised an eyebrow at this bad pun. "As I told you a few days ago, you'll have to pass this test if you want to work for me. And alone. I won't be around to put you on the right track or save you if you're in danger. Because on the real field, you have to be able to defend your own skin. Is that clear ?"
"Yes." Akira replied with annoyance as she was eager to start to then get back to the castle more quickly to warm up before getting a bad cold. "Tell me instead what you hid in the forest that I have to find."
"It's a piece of black fabric. If you can spot the clues left along the way by the "Death Eater" who left it behind, you'll be able to find it without any issue. Otherwise, you'll die frozen in this forest."
If Akira didn't know Moody so well, she would have burst out laughing thinking that he was joking. But he was very serious, so she was offended instead by the hard task that he had given to her.
"Find a piece of fabric ? In this dense forest and in the most complete darkness ? This is nonsense !"
"Do you think that during missions, facing real danger will be easier ?" Moody replied as he had taken the habit of reminding her every two minutes that she could die now and then. "On the contrary, the task will be worse because you won't know what you're looking for and you'll see your comrades get killed as a bonus."
He stopped talking when he realized that speaking about teammates who died in combat wasn't very wise as he was aware that Akira still had terrible recollections of the death of Matsuno and Tatsuno.
"Just find this fabric, and with all the powers that you want. Whether it's magic or something else. I'll wait for you here and if you haven't come back in an hour, I'll go get your frozen body."
"That won't happen. And I'll bring you this fabric in thirty minutes. Not one second more." Akira advised him as she didn't appreciate having her abilities being questioned.
"In that case, you better get going if you want to keep that promise." Moody recommended her as he took out a pocket watch on which he checked the time.
At this announce, Akira started running fast to rush into the Forbidden Forest without the slightest hesitation. However, speeding headlong wasn't the solution since Moody had advised her to look for clues to reach her goal. Slowing down, her eyes on the lookout and her magic wand out to illuminate the surroundings, she tried to get closer to the direction from which Moody had come to pick her up since he was the one who had hidden this fabric. She ended up spotting footprints in the snow that an amateur would have passed by without seeing them as they had been half-erased, probably to not make her task easier.
Starting to follow what was left of them, Akira went deeper into the forest whose undergrowth prevented her from moving forward. In the middle of the night, danger was everywhere. And staying alert was the rule number one to survive in such an environment. Not staying in the open could also help, so Akira ducked as much as possible to go unnoticed among the branches that were blocking her way – for those which were still intact as some of them seemed to have been cut nicely with a spell, an other clue - while continuing to follow the track. Doing so, she started to spot small carved crosses on some trees, probably left by the "Death Eater" to not get lost in this big forest.
Up until then, it was a simple mission to collect clues, like dozens of other missions that Akira had done in the past at Konoha. Nothing new or very complicated. But the place she was evolving in was quite different, a bit like the Forest of Death in which she had passed her Chunin exam. She knew that she would soon encounter trouble, she just didn't know what as there could be many.
For the moment, only the crunching of the frozen vegetation was accompanying her. But soon she caught - thanks to her overtrained hearing - distant and regular noises that became the sound of hooves approaching her position at high speed. She knew that centaurs were leaving in the forest and that they didn't like humans invading their territory due to old conflicts that the wizards had started by considering them as inferior beings.
Akira had no grudge against the centaurs but she preferred to not have to tell them this in the face. Therefore, she took some height and settled on a high branch that was allowing her to see everything without being seen. Placing a hand over her mouth to prevent making any noise and turning off the light from her magic wand, she saw three centaurs emerge from between the bushes to skid to a halt on the frozen ground right where she had been standing a few seconds before.
"I was sure that I heard someone prowling around here." One of the centaurs declared while scanning the surroundings.
"Your hunting skills are declining, Ronan." His colleague mocked while stamping his hooves on the ground. "There's no more living soul here than in the constellation of Orion."
"And these footprints on the ground." The one named Ronan replied angrily while pointing to the fresh ones that Akira had left behind. "They come from my imagination maybe ?"
"Let's not get upset, dear companions. This person who escaped us seems to have ventured alone into this part of the forest. In this weather and with the danger lurking late at night, it doesn't represent a risk for us but for itself because only fools dare to come here."
"You forgive these humans too easily, Firenze. It will cause you trouble in the future. You only have to observe the stars to see that I'm right."
"For them to accept us as their equals, we must first show them compassion. That is my humble opinion and I'm not forcing anyone to follow it. Especially not you, Bane." The centaur named Firenze declared in a calm tone that seemed to annoy his colleague.
"I don't care about your opinion. I just ask you to not indoctrinate the whole horde with your crazy ideals." The one named Bane threw at the latter angrily.
He then took a few steps out of Akira's field of vision and in order to not lose sight of him, she leaned over the branch on which she was perched, causing one of her hands to slip. She barely caught herself before falling into the void and crashing in the middle of the centaurs group who wouldn't be very happy to see her, but she had nevertheless knocked over a few branches and some piles of snow in the process.
The movement was barely visible and the noise inaudible but they had not escaped to Bane who resumed scrutinizing the forest with attention. Then without any warning, he drew his bow and arrow and aimed at the position where Akira was standing. He then shoot even though he couldn't see her clearly in the shadow. The arrow still almost hit its goal as Akira had to lean back to avoid getting her head pierced. The arrow went to pierce the branch just above her instead, missing its target by a few centimeters.
Slowly recovering from the fright that she got, Akira heard Bane - who was probably thinking that he had reached his target - order the others to follow him and they all left the area at a gallop. After a few minutes standing still and waiting for them to be far enough, she returned to the ground only to find out that the footprints that she had been following so far had been replaced by hoof prints.
"Great." She thought bitterly at the loss of such valuable information. "Really great. Now I can only rely on the marks on the trees and the magically-cut bushes to find the piece of fabric. But they are so hard to spot that it's easy to lose the track."
Except that admitting defeat wasn't part of the ninja's vocabulary. They had to have tried at least ten other options before giving up. And Akira found one in the form of clones - three to be precise - who helped her find again the faint footprints a little further in the forest. It was a stroke of luck for her so she quickened her pace before other centaurs or any other forest creature could interrupt her search and erase some clues.
Focused on her task, her eyes fixed on the ground, Akira was now jumping nimbly over bushes or other brambles, sometimes even using the base of trunks to take support on and go faster. She was about to continue on her momentum when she spotted a different behaviour in the footprints. Indeed, the latter had stopped being linear and instead were trampling in one place before following a right angle from the path that they had taken until then.
Suspecting that something had been going on there, Akira came to a stop and began to study the track carefully by the light of her magic wand. Many branches had been cut neatly and many crosses could be seen on the surrounding trees - more than what she had been able to glimpse on the way - and by looking more closely at these, she ended up spotting a piece of black fabric attached to one branch and which was fluttering into the freezing wind.
"Jackpot !" Akira said to herself with enthusiasm because it meant the end of her ordeal in the cold. "All I have to do now is untie it and go give it to Moody."
But as she was reaching out a hand to grab her trophee, she immediately had to pull it back when a flash of red light almost hit her arm. And Akira jumped back when a second flash was sent directly at her. Landing a little further in a skid on the frozen ground before throwing herself behind a tree to take cover, she began to scan quickly the woods around her to finally spot a hooded figure half-hiding behind a trunk.
Wondering briefly what such a character was doing here during her mission for Moody, it didn't take her long to determine that with this timing, it was probably the latter who had come to throw a spanner in the works. And she wasn't going to let it happen because she wanted the job that he had promised to her more than anything else. But as she got out from her hideout with her magic wand raised to cast a spell on him, her wand was brutally snatched from her hand by an Expelliarmus. However, it wasn't a big deal since she was better at using her ninja skills than magic during a fight.
Akira just kept in mind that her main goal was to get the piece of fabric, not hurting her mentor. Therefore not paying too much attention to the latter, she moved at lightning speed towards her trophee while dodging now and then with agility some spells that were aimed at her. In a second she reached again the tree on which the piece of fabric was attached and she was about to take it when an other spell forced her to withdraw her hand with extreme speed.
Realizing that taking her time to untie the fabric wasn't possible, Akira gave it another try by simply catching the branch on which the cloth was and breaking it. Now in possession of the coveted object, she expected the fight to stop only to be congratulated and hired as an intern to work with Moody.
The outcome was however quite different as an explosive spell struck the tree from which she had taken the fabric, badly damaging its trunk and throwing Akira backwards. Crashing into another poor tree that hadn't asked for anything, she slid to the ground before regaining her senses in an instant.
"What are you doing ? I found your damn piece of fabric under thirty minutes. That means that..." She began before throwing herself to the side to avoid a spell that made strings wrap around the tree trunk on which she had been leaning.
Noticing that Moody wasn't ending the exercise, Akira got on guard and decided to take her attacks to the next level. Discreetly placing a decoy where she was standing before hiding among the trees to sneak up close to the Auror, she waited for the latter to touch the clone - making it disappear in a cloud of smoke - to then jump on her enemy from behind. Even though Moody got able to cast a spell in his back - which was his blindspot since he didn't get time to turn around - thanks to his magic eye, she still managed to grab his hood that was covering his face and remove it to reveal that it was indeed Moody after having some doubt about his identity since he was attacking her so fiercely. Then taking advantage of having him close, she grabbed his arm which was holding his magic wand and burnt his hand with a ninja technique – simply flames in her palm that also burnt her glove - to make him let go.
However before Akira got able to really harm him, Moody disappeared and reappeared right next to her by using Apparition. Holding his wand at the level of her temple, she got no other choice than raising her hands to surrender. She failed to put an end to his attack but surprisingly, it wasn't disappointment that she heard in Moody's voice.
"You've passed." He declared to her great relief as she had enough of this stupid test in this icy weather. "I'll take you with me on missions during the Christmas holidays. But don't forget. Until then, constant vigilance !"
Hello dear readers,
I hope you enjoyed this small test. That was the least Moody could do to see Akira's full potential. Because he knows that she isn't an ordinary student - she's getting in too much trouble for it to be normal - but he has no clue about her real abilities. And my little finger is telling me that he won't finish to be surprised in the future, even after training talented Aurors for around twenty years.
Everything will start during these Christmas holidays. Akira has some time to kill - even if it would have been a good idea to simply stay at Hogwarts to revise for her OWLs - and Moody urgently needs the help of an intern during this period for which lot of his colleagues are taking days off. It's a win-win, as long as nothing bad happens to our favorite ninja. Otherwise, I won't have anything to write after the next chapter that I intend to publish some days before Christmas since I won't be around during these holidays.