The next morning, the group were waking up in the forested mountain after they left the village the other day. Their next destination is a large town just a distance from here. Noka was the last one to wake up since she had the best sleep in a long time.
This time, she was able to sleep in the same tent with Shizuka and (Y/n) last night. She could still smell their scent on their beds and on her clothes as well. Before she and her brother were separated, she would always sleep and wake up with Kai right next to her in his arms. Without him, it actually felt lonely these past few days. But because of Hyuga, (Y/n), Yoshitsune and the others, the thought of her jumping into her brother's arm again filled her with hopeful warmth.
Sunbeams were pouring through the open gaps of the tent but Noka's body refused to get up. The large covers were so soft and the scent of Shizuka and (Y/n) made her feel comfortable. But she eventually gets out from the tent yawning as she drags herself over to (Y/n). Shizuka was waiting for (Y/n) to finish making the porridge for breakfast for everyone and notices Noka toddling towards them.
"Good morning, Sweetheart~" Shizuka smiles warmly at her.
"Good morning, Noka. Breakfast is just ready. Go ahead and eat while we go to the river and wash up. Later, we can make rice balls for everyone, okay?" (Y/n) says serving a bowl of porridge for Noka.
"Let's go, Shizuka," the two then went on their way as Noka tiredly ate her breakfast alone. The warm taste of the porridge and the amazing flavours (Y/n) was able to put in them immediately wakes her body up.
Sniffing the air, she could tell the ingredients for the rice balls were in the basket near the supplies and thought maybe she could surprise (Y/n) by making her for them first.
Meanwhile, Sohma was the first of the few to finish and head back to their camp. There he saw Noka finishing up her porridge and making her way to the basket where the rice balls ingredients are.
Was she about to make rice balls? He thought as he watched her with a smile forming on his lips. From here she looked so small and cute that Sohma had an idea.
After washing the vegetables using an extra canteen, Noka made her way towards the table where the rest of the ingredients were. Just as she was forming the shape of the rice, she noticed that the box of seaweed wraps are missing. Looking around, she found the box at the root of a nearby tree.
She runs over and picks it up but when she got back to the table, there were already cutely made rice balls, with a face of a dog and cat freshly made and serve neatly on the table. Noka was sure this wasn't on the table before and looked around. No one was around and she looked back at the rice balls. They were still there, tempting her to eat them by staring at her with their small cutely made beady eyes. So she couldn't help but reach out for one and took a bite.
But immediately regrets it.
Her mouth started heating up and she couldn't help but fan her tongue in pain. She hurried over to the canteen she used but she already used up all the water from it to wash the vegetables. She looked around, crying and whimpering in pain while rummaging through the baskets, desperate for water. Noka finally notices another canteen and grabbed it, immediately taking huge gulps from it.
"Noka?" Sohma appears behind her calling out her name but she ignored him and continued to gulp down the liquid.
"Why are you drinking from the urine tank?"
She quickly sprays the liquid from her mouth onto the grass with her face that went from red to green. Collapsing to the ground, she wanted to throw up until she hears Sohma burst out laughing.
"Okay, okay! That was just normal water, don't worry," he dries his eyes as Noka looked up at him to find him eating one of the spicy rice balls.
"What do you think? I love eating wasabi with rice balls. It was even funny to see your reaction," Sohma continues to laugh and stops when he still sees Noka on the ground. This time red from anger.
"Hey, come on..." he bends down and stretched his arm out.
"I'm sorry-" he was cut off when she violently and suddenly chomps on his hand.
Unfortunately, she accidently bit his wooden hand. Noka's eyes started to tear up and her teeth were still stuck on the wood as her gums were starting to swell up painfully.
"Wha!? Noka! Are you-" he didn't have time to check on her when his face was slammed onto something metallic. Removing it from his face, it was one of the metal cooking pots.
More worried for her (even though his nose was bleeding) he sees her running away into the forest. On her way, she ran past a certain redhead who was only wearing a bathing towel and roughly drying his hair with another towel. Enya looked back at Noka running pass him as he walked over to Sohma.
"What happened to your nose?" Enya asked wide-eyed to see it was bleeding. Hearing him say that, Sohma quickly closes up his nostrils.
"I... made her somewhat mad..." he confesses guilty.
"Want me to check on the Kiddo?" Enya offers with an amusing smile.
"Make sure you wear some clothes first. But please do, I'm afraid she's hurt ..." Sohma accepts and looks at the tiny bite marks on his arms. Touching it, they were quite deep for such small teeth.
Noka arrived at a nearby river stream and began washing her mouth with the water. Her jaw still hurts but luckily none of her teeth broke. Washing down her mouth more, she notices someone floating pleasantly down the stream.
"Hyosuke?" she calls out to him. Their eyes meet as he was floating by and dive in front of where she was sitting.
He came back to the surface right next to her, almost splashing water onto her, standing and dripping wet.
"Hey Noka!" he smiles brightly at her.
"What were you doing?" she asked, curious to see only Hyosuke around.
"Oh! I found a river stream that flowed smoothly so I decided to relax a bit more while the others went ahead. Just hope they save some food for me..." saying this he sits next to Noka and takes a good look at her.
"What's wrong? You don't look happy," he asks with worry.
"Nothing..." she murmurs holding her own hands.
"Hey, you can tell me... You trust me right?" he gives her another bright and playful grin which almost convince her judging from her look.
"You can trust this face, can't you?" he says giving her innocent puppy eyes this time.
"...Sohma was mean..." she finally mumbles.
"Sohma?"
Noka explained what happened to her starting from the rice balls to her teeth which Hyosuke check just to make sure she was okay.
"That guy..." he frowns after listening to her whole story.
"He's so mean!" she cries angrily.
"Yeah, Sohma can actually be like that..." Hyosuke grumbles. "Seriously! He even bullies me too you know!"
"Not only him but everyone since I'm the youngest out of all of them! Enya teases about my virginity, Mizuki treats me like a little kid and Kazemasa nags me about training!" Hyosuke starts complaining but somehow it started to cheer Noka up.
"Hehehe..." she lets out a giggle making Hyosuke pout.
"Sure! Laugh at my pain!..." he says with sarcasm but he was also enjoying seeing her laughing.
"You guys are huuuge weirdos!" she exclaims happily.
"As if you're not one! Co'mere!" Hyosuke spread his arms as Noka screams happily.
But just as he was about to grab her, Hyosuke was suddenly pushed back into the water.
"Never fear! The Great Enya is here! Back from once, you came, 'Pervert'!" Enya proclaims as Noka burst out laughing wildly that she was rolling on the ground.
"Enya.. you.." half of Hyosuke's head peek out from the water as he glared with a murderous look in his eyes at Enya who was roaring with laughter.
"YOU. JERK!" jumping out of the water, he grabs onto Enya as he tries to get away from him. Though he was taking his time still laughing while pushing Hyosuke off him.
"*Sniff*..*sniff*.." they both immediately stopped when they heard Noka suddenly sniffling.
"Huh? Noka, don't cry!" Hyosuke quickly rushes to her side but when he looked at her face she wasn't crying.
"Look up there!" she points towards the sky and the two men looked up to see smoke coming up from the distance.
Moments later, after Enya and Hyosuke told Yoshitsune and the others what they saw, the whole group were on their way on horses as fast as they could. The smoke was getting larger as they got closer and in the distance, they could see a town, the very one they were supposed to go. Men in thieves clothing were threatening the townsfolk as a few buildings were getting collapsed. Sohma and Mizuki, being one of the fastest, jumped off their horses and ran towards the group. With his large boomerang, Sohma threw it with force at the group. A few of them noticed and tried to run but the weapon had already circled around them as they closed in on each other. Mizuki was the next to circle around them at light speed while wrapping them together with chains.
Another group were getting alarmed and started running away from the sudden reinforcements. However, they were suddenly blocked by a random large fire in their path and couldn't get any other way. From the rooftops, Hyuga fired multiple arrows at the group. Not wanting to actually kill them, the arrows only hit their clothing and pin them to the ground. The large fire that was blocking their way died down and standing there was Enya instead.
Kazemasa was fast to knock down his enemies with his sword. With his wind abilities, he managed to appear at different places within seconds. Confusing each of his enemies and blocking their escape route. Hyosuke raised his katana's blade at one of the bandits but Kazemasa appeared in front of him just in time as both of their swords clash.
"Don't. The war is over, Hyosuke," reminding him and went back to chasing down the others.
"Tch," with an annoyed look, Hyosuke clicked his tongue and sheathed back his sword. Spotting a few trying to escape his vision, he ran after them from the rooftop and jump down in an alley to block their way.
They all raised their weapons at Hyosuke but he only smiled confidently as he cracks his knuckles. He charges at them but before any of them could even land a single hit on him, Hyosuke attacks with his bare fist and feet resulted in them falling to the ground paralyzed because of his ninjitsu.
Yoshitsune defended the townsfolk from the bandits while Noritsune managed to not let any of them escape. As they found, Yoshitsune heard another building exploded and was starting to collapse.
Hearing cries from the inside, he shouts "Goyo! Benkei!"
Nodding, the men hurried over to the inside where Benkei held up any collapsing places of the building while Goyo hurried to help the people inside escape. Once Benkei made sure everyone escape, he made his own exit by smashing through a thin wall.
"You okay?" Goyo asked looking at him covered in dust and splinters.
"I'm fine," he replies panting.
Later, they grouped up at the downtown. The bandits that they managed to capture were locked up while (Y/n), Sohma, Shizuka, and Goyo tend to any townsfolk that is injured. Noka helped as well since she was also fairly good in medics. Meanwhile, Yoshitsune and the others went around town gathering as much information as they could and arrived back at the inn the townsfolk offered for saving them.
"Luckily, this is only their first attempt but they had been planning this attack for a while," Enya says.
"The bombs are evidence to prove it. After all, bombs do take a while to be planted," Benkei adds.
"The town holds unique events here. Because of that, the town is always enriched with travelers to celebrate joyous events. However, the townsfolk also mentioned that this town was also used as a refugee safe zone during the Heian war," Hyosuke says but somehow he only says that purposely to guilt trip Noritsune.
"We can see how carefully they managed to plan this... but to raid this town so violently..." Kazemasa closes his eyes in desperation.
"Unfortunately we only managed to capture less than half of them than we thought. From what I gathered from the townsfolk, they were a lot more than we thought," Noritsune says.
"I tried to interrogate with some of the bandits but they kept their mouth shut," Mizuki says.
"I manage to find a few maps from their belongings but unfortunately they didn't show any routes on where they'd escape or where their hideout is located," Hyuga says as he spread a drawn map on the table.
Meanwhile, Noka was outside the room they were in, listening to their conversation. Suddenly, a hand touched her shoulder as she quickly whipped around in alarm to find Shizuka looking down at her with worry.
"Darling, we the adults are talking now. We shouldn't disturb them," she says gently and take's her hand.
Shizuka took her to the room they were staying in and sat her down in her futon.
"Oh! I forgot I got something for you, Noka," Shizuka exclaims and takes out something from her bag.
"I bought you a bag that seems to match your traveling clothes. So now you can put anything inside," she gives the bag to her.
Noka smiles happily at Shizuka's gift and wears it around herself to pose for Shizuka.
"So cute..." Shizuka thought with her cheeks turning pink.
"Excuse me," another voice interrupted the two of them. Opening the door, (Y/n) was there and smiles at the two of them.
"Shizuka, could you help me with some of the townsfolk?" she asks her.
"Of course (Y/n). Stay here Noka and go to bed," giving her a kiss on the forehead. Shizuka stood up and left the room with (Y/n) leaving her all alone. Again.
She touched the place where Shizuka kissed her and looked around the room. Unless she wants to get in trouble she wasn't allowed to go outside unless she was with one of the 'weirdos'. But the ninjas were discussing their next move and the ladies were helping the townsfolk, Noka was really the only one left.
Out of boredom, she paces around the room to get tired and her body got warmer so she opens the window to let the air in. It was dark but she was still able to see through the night. Then she saw a suspicious figure; a young man could be seen scanning his surroundings until he locked eyes with Noka. It took a short second to realize he was caught and starts panicking but another voice told him to shush up immediately. Closing his mouth with two of his hands, he snuck off with the other.
She immediately closed the window and back away from what she just witnessed.
Someone like him wasn't supposed to go in that area because the captured bandits were there. Then again she remembered one the ninjas assigned some guards there before they went on with their meeting. Then again she HAD to tell them what she saw. Taking a deep breath, she opens the door but her vision immediately went dark.