Woah. Ara's mind boggles as her head peaks over the railing of the watchtower. Trees of this magnitude don't seem like they should exist. Mind you, the watchtower barely reaches halfway up this trunk. A cool breeze brushes the leaves and gently curls on Ara's face. Momentarily easing the strain on her body.

"Watch Kimi and Yasuke," Nina orders. Tossing Ara a pair of binoculars that nearly fumble out of her hand.

"Let me know if they get in any trouble."

Nina unfurls her bow and winds up the tension as Ara looks through the lenses, to the path below. The four split up into two groups and follow the north and south routes as her eyes follow the blades of light striking the pathway that swirls through the forest. The trees on the outer edge have much larger trunks than those on the inside. Even at what looks like a tenth of the size, the thinner trees also pinnacle out of sight, amongst the leafy sky.

Why would a culture develop to suspend their towns off the ground? Ara finds herself curious. The intention of the design must have a purpose beyond beauty.

Resource management seems like the logical answer.

A crunch whips through the air, drawing Ara's eyes to catch Nina releasing an arrow from her bow. Ara flips her binoculars up to see an arrow hitting a guard in the neck and dropping to his knees.

"Eye's on group two!"

Ara shivers, shaking as she raises the binoculars to her eyes. It feels like white noise, trickling up her hands in a sort of numbness. It pulls her attention but she focuses on the sight of Kimi and Yasuke, ignoring it because she doesn't know what else to do.

"I can't see them anymore, they went into some shop," Her voice cracks as she tries to be useful.

"Chaung and Matsuko have entered the comms center, we'll be blind for a little while." Her calm demeanor only makes Ara more nervous, only just piecing together what Nina said as she looks through the binoculars in a haze.

"You're doing a good job, by the way," Nina adds, squinting through her viewfinder. The words only provide a minuscule relief to the stress in Ara's trembling.

"Really?"

"On my first mission, I almost got Chaung killed," Nina chuckles.

How is she laughing right now? Her relaxation doesn't translate to Ara the same way her courage did. Right now, Ara doesn't feel that strength at all. It's as if one wrong callout would fail the entire plan, and there's a fifty percent chance Ara is the one to make the mistake- well, more like one hundred actually.

"I'll try not to do that," Ara responds, trying to mimic Nina's calm demeanor but her sense of humor just isn't available.

She feels her heart pound against her chest when she sees the vague figure of Kimi and Yasuke sprinting through the marketplace- "Something's wrong. Kimi and Yasuke are running."

Nina's bow flicks towards the marketplace as she readies an arrow. "Watch group one."

Ara turns her binoculars to the doorway Chaung and Matsuko had entered earlier, still waiting for them to exit the room as her eyes peek at Nina who stands motionless and primed to fire. As her eyes turn back to the empty bridge, the sudden launch of an arrow slices the air. Nearly making Ara drop the sights as she fumbles to catch them and keep her eyes on group two- they're out.

In a panic, she scans the area to locate Chaung when she sees them crossing a bridge where two guards are readying to fire at them.

Shit- An arrow hurls from beside her head before she thinks any further, startling her as she jitters and loses sight of them again. Her slippery palms trying their best to work against her.

"Group two!" Nina orders.

Ara flips her head in the direction of the marketplace, where she sees the entire crowd squatting down as two guards aim their sight at Kimi. A sudden burst of red ejects from Kimi's leg before a ploom of smoke hides them both from view.

"Fuck!" Ara screams in a panic. "They shot her!" The binoculars quake in her hands, becoming unusable and her breath shudders as it did when she fell through the gallows.

Unable to find her breath.

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"I'm sorry," She exhales, barely loud enough for Nina to hear amongst her gasps for air.

"Focus," Nina responds, calmly aiming down her sights at the marketplace. "She isn't dead yet."

Ara tries to peer through the shaking glass and sees Yasuke and Matsuko running past a group of three guards who are headed in the opposite direction.

How?

"She'll need your help," Nina confirms.

Ara fails with words, just nodding in response as she watches them head towards the plaza.

"Looks like they're all getting to the west side of the plaza soon. We should get going," Nina has her aim on group one, briefly glancing over to group two before she lowers aim. Unclipping the arrow she had readied and folding her bow.

"Head downstairs. I'll be there shortly," Nina orders as she crosses the bridge to a room embedded in the tree on the other side of the watchtower.

Folding the binoculars and shoving them into her bag, Ara stands up to the numb feeling of her entire body. Her lightheadedness tilts her body over as she stumbles to catch herself. She's caught off guard by how difficult this is. How much strain she's enduring through simply providing overwatch. Does it get easier than this?

Each step down the staircase is a focused mission of its own, the steep drop down the center of the trunk is unguarded by railings or any real form of safety. It's like she feels nothing, but everything. The sensitivity of her body gives her too much feedback to navigate. The weight of her bag as it lugs against her back, adding to the drop of each step. She'd never imagine she'd be so relieved to see the bottom of a staircase, or glad she would make it down one without dropping to her death.

The warm daylight brightly hugs her cheek as she steps out the doorway of the trunk. Tilting her head as high as she can to see the bottom of the watchtower, with no sign of Nina. It's a good time to pause and take a deep breath to relieve as much tension as she can. Closing her eyes as she reaches her exhale, a sudden thumping of footsteps encroaches on her. She barely notices a guard, armed with a knife in his hand before he tackles Ara to the floor with all of his strength- A guard from earlier. The one Yasuke punched to be specific.

How is he alive? Her mind races as it crashes to the ground with all of the guards' weight pressing her to an uncontrolled exhale.

She scurries as the guard rolls on top of her and raises the blade to her neck. She grabs his arm to hold the blade as far from her neck as she can. Looks up to see the swollen half of the guard's face dripping blood onto hers as the blade slowly creeps it's way closer to her throat.

This is what she wasn't ready for.

A fight.

She's already losing and knows it. All she can picture is the blood pouring from her neck once the edge reaches her throat. She tries pushing the guard's hands to the side but he resets his grip, sliding out of Ara's defense before bringing the blade right up to her neck.

She grabs it.

The blade.

She screams in shock as more and more blood starts to seep from both her hands. The pain of the blades is still unapparent, shielded by adrenaline as her fear is truly occupied by the mass of blood escaping her body. Her entire body retaliates with a burst of horrified strength, lifting the guard at her chest as she pushes the blade away from her.

The guard's shoulder crashes to the dirt as Ara rushes to her feet, unthinkingly using her hands to push herself up. A fervent pain cuts through her arms as she wails again, staring at the cavernous gashes dousing her palms red.

She can't see straight, her panic blurs her vision as she watches the guard's silhouette rise to its feet. Her foot paces backward as she reaches for her knife, nearly dropping it as she unsheathes it to defend herself.

She paces backward again, thinking about running but realizing she's cornered with the docks behind her. She knows she loses this fight, even if she didn't have these hands that can hardly hold onto her knife with conviction.

The guard picks up his knife, before slowly walking towards her with eyes of judgment. A last stand in strength, the man's resolve feels like that of a man with nothing left to lose.

Why do I feel him? Her mind ponders the clarity of this stranger's resolve.

Ara lifts her blade as she shuffles further back, her foot sliding and catching itself in the dirt. She stumbles, losing her balance as the guard decides to vault at her. Shit- She panics, trying her best to recover when a knife soars at the swollen side of the man's skull, impaling to the handle.

His eyes roll back as a fountain of blood flows from his head. He drops flat on his face with his momentum dragging him across the floor to Ara's feet. She lifts her head to the sight of Nina running over and reaching into her backpack. She pulls out a little box with a cylindrical container and hurriedly places a gooey substances

on the face of two pieces of cloth, before wrapping them around Ara's hands.

"You're okay," She says, trying to calm Ara's trembling hands as she stares at the corpse by her feet. The pain of the medicine gnaws at her hands as she struggles to move her fingers. "We need to keep moving."

Nina tucks Ara's knife into her sheath before stepping over to the dead body and yanking out her own one. A stream of blood shoots up as the blade paths out.

"Thanks," Ara's voice cracks. uneasy and struggling to stay suspended on her feet.

"Of course," Nina nods, sheathing her knife and walking to the pathway.

Ara wobbles behind her, looking back at the guard's corpse one last time.

I'm alive?

"The pursuit of passion is the highest pursuit a child of Luná can undertake. For the passion of Luná is within each of us." - Unknown