The day began much like every other day. Kazu and Anna were jarred awake by Arwain jumping onto the bed between them. Kazu immediately began a tickle assault as Arwain giggled.
Now that they were awake, Kazu figured they should start preparing for their new mission. He called for everyone to meet in the foyer when they were ready to head out.
In less than 30 minutes, everyone has gathered in the foyer. Everyone has their armor on and a few more weapons than they usually carry. Kazu offers to put the extra weapons into his bag, then spends the next few minutes collecting weapons and placing them in storage. Kazu hands out paper and pens from his bag to everyone, asking everyone to take notes of anything that needs to be brought up or talked about when they are all together.
After everything is situated, Kazu, Anna, and Tara decide that fifteen people walking together as a group is not the best plan. Anna and Kazu separate the ten members of their 'family' into two teams. Kazu's team consists of Orelfa, Felina, Felix, and Arwain as 'Team One'. Kazu wanted to make sure he knew Arwain was always safe, so she had to be on his team. Since she was on his team, Orelfa had to be on his team too, since she had the same mindset about her mother that Kazu has about his 'daughter'. The twins were added because of their light and shadow magics, and because they look nonthreatening. Anna's 'Team Two' Has Orolfie, Petal, Rask, and Lina on her team. Tara's five-person team, consisting of her normal hunting team, is 'Team Three'.
Kazu's group will follow the road, Tara's group will be two to three hundred meters to his left, and Anna's will be the same distance to his right. Team one is to act nonthreatening and still draw attention to themselves, the other two teams are to assist team one, and to remove scouts they find along the way.
Once the assignments are given out, they head to the road to begin their long journey. Teams two and three head to their respective sides of the road, and Kazu's team begins their 'leisurely' journey down the road.
Over the next several hours, Arwain spent half her time skipping down the road, trying her best to keep up with the group or riding on either Kazu's or Orelfa's shoulders. The group talks loudly about whatever random topic pops into their head. The members of the other themes with exceptional hearing spend most of their time quietly laughing or blushing at the conversations Kazu's group is having. Lina, while blushing, takes out her pen and paper, after checking that no one saw her, she writes down a few notes about the conversations.
As lunchtime gets closer, they decide to all meet on Anna's side for a meal. Since they are officially in enemy territory, Felix sneaks to Tara's team to use his light magic to sneak her team across the road so they can join for lunch. Shortly after they arrive, Kazu and an exhausted-looking Arwain return from setting detectors around the area.
Orelfa asked, "Why does she look like she sprinted a kilometer?"
Kazu responded, "Well, we were erasing our tracks so we could not be followed, but Arwain thought it would be funny if some scouts found our tracks and followed them, leading them all over the meadow. So I went along with it."
Orelfa asked, "Why aren't you tired?"
Kazu responded, "I only had to stay next to Arwain, it was not that much running. I do have much longer legs than our little lady. Though we did make the prints look like we were walking, which was the hardest part."
Orelfa takes a damp cloth and wipes down Arwain. When they rejoined the group, everyone took an hour to eat and relax. As Anna starts to ask if anyone has any notes she is interrupted as Arwain detects grass being crushed by humanoid feet 400 meters north. Felix hid everyone using his light magic.
They stand there watching as a scout soldier wanders out of the woods, heading in their direction. He stops as he finds tracks for a man and a child walking through the grass, then turns to follow them. They spend the next 45 minutes watching him, following their tracks from one side of the field to the other. As the trail changes direction for the fourth time, they start to hear him mumbling obscenities to himself.
The scout continues following the traces of someone moving randomly around the field until he notices the traces end. He turns to retrace his steps, then hears knuckles crack behind him. He turns around to find Orolfie punching him in his face, knocking him out.
A few minutes later, he wakes up in the field, arms tied behind his back and surrounded by 15 people. A giant man kneels next to him and begins talking.
"How far away is your unit?" Kazu asks.
The scout ignores the question.
"I see your rank on your uniform, which means you are an officer. So you have two options: answer the questions and be a prisoner of war, or refuse and we bury you here."
"How far away is your unit?" Kazu asks.
The scout ignores the question again.
Kazu shakes his head, then uses earth magic to dig a 1.6-meter-deep hole. He picks up the scout and stands him in the hole. The scout tries to free himself from Kazu's grasp and fails. As he struggles Kazu refills the hole up to the scout's knees.
"I'm getting tired of asking the same question. How far away is your unit?" Kazu asks again.
The scout hesitates, so Kazu adds more dirt to the hole. "Three Kilometers down the road." The scout replies.
"How many soldiers are in your unit?" Kazu asks.
He hesitates again, and Kazu adds more dirt. "Three scout units and a battalion, just over 1000 soldiers," the scout replies.
"The dirt is now up to your waist, you might want to be more forthcoming with the answers. How many are officers?" Kazu asks.
"Including scouts, about 250," the scout quickly answers.
Kazu and the others spend the next few minutes asking him less important questions, always getting an immediate reply.
After they have finished the questioning, Kazu uses his earth magic to clear the dirt from the hole, freeing the scout. He pulls the scout out of the hole and throws him over his shoulder. He then turns to everyone and tells them he'll be right back. Turning back towards the border, he takes off running fast enough that only elf and cat eyes could follow.
15 minutes later, he reappears in the camp. Then he begins telling the others the plan for taking the battalion. As he tells aspects of the plan, members of his party begin volunteering for different aspects of the plan and taking notes.
An hour later, Arwain, Petal, Lina, and Anna walk up the road next to the enemy camp. As they walked by, several soldiers noticed them. As the soldiers walk up to them Anna picks up Arwain. Her her shoes fall off once she leaves the ground. The one leading the way has an officer rank. Eight of the nine soldiers behind him are moving with hesitancy. The ninth has a creepy grin on his face, staring at Arwain and rubbing his hands together as he walks.
The officer calls out to stop the girls, drawing the attention of the other soldiers close by, ones that are not in his group. The officer begins their standard questioning as the soldiers move to surround the girls.
Anna answers the questions, as all the girls give the appearance of not noticing the men surrounding them. Anna continues answering questions she sets Arwain back down on the ground.
Moments later, the soldiers had finished their "surrounding maneuver," and the officer made a motion to capture the girls.
Knowing what to expect, Arwain was already set to use her nature magic. Before the soldiers were able to take a full step, the roots and grasses around them sprang up and entangled their legs, locking them in place. As the guards hollered out in surprise, the girls did the same. Running towards the camp, yelling that something was attacking the soldiers. A sizeable group of officers and soldiers began running towards the captured soldiers, straight into Arwain's trap. The moment they stopped to try to assist the trapped soldiers, the grass and roots quickly shot up and ensnared them.
While the soldiers are being ensnared, the girls are still running around yelling about them being attacked. Thus causing more soldiers to rush to their comrades and becoming ensnared themselves.
As the girls make their way through the camp, Arwain casts her trap spell several more times. Just over 600 soldiers have been ensnared in her trap by the time the remaining soldiers' suspicions focused on the girls running around their camp.
As the soldiers move towards Anna's group, Kazu appears at the edge of the camp and yells out, "Lay down your weapons and surrender, if you fight, you will die."
An officer calls for everyone to attack Kazu, and 55 officers begin moving towards him. They grab soldiers, forcing them to move towards Kazu, acting more as shields than as soldiers. Half of the soldiers did not even have a sword on them, and the half that did still had them sheathed.
As they move towards Kazu, Felix's light magic allowed the remaining members of his party to move behind the officers unseen. Once the soldiers are halfway to Kazu, Felix drops his 'cloak' and the hunters begin their attack on the officers. The team slices, stabs, and bludgeons their way through the officers until only nine remain. The remaining officers do well to counter the individual attacks coming their way.
Felix, the only team member who is not currently in a battle, moves to assist his sister, who happens to be the closest teammate to him. As Felina darts in and out of the range of the officer. She slices and stabs at him all the while dodging his sword swings. In the middle of her current attack, Felix joins in slicing the back of his knees, causing him to immediately collapse. Once his movement was limited, it took Felina just a few seconds to finish the battle. A quick high five, and the twins separate to assist the others still fighting.
Once the other team members were able to receive assistance, they quickly annihilated the officers. By the time the soldiers reached Kazu, the officers were dead, which Kazu pointed out to them.
Kazu says loudly, yet calmly, "If you want to fight me, I will comply, but since I know you are not here willingly, I will give you the option to drop your weapons and you can enjoy the rest of your life free."
The soldiers who still had swords dropped them. As Kazu moved to the entangled soldiers, the remaining soldiers were herded to an empty area in the field by the team members who were previously fighting the officers.
Once he arrived at Arwain's 'garden', Anna and her team walked with him through the hundreds of trapped men. As Kazu points out soldiers to release Arwain frees them. When they reach one of the soldiers, Arwain refuses to release him. Explaining to Kazu how he was acting earlier. Kazu puts him with the officers, still bound by Arwain's magic. Two hours later, all the other soldiers were free and moved to their comrades. The officers were still entangled, though no longer rooted to the ground. They were able to walk at this point. Kazu questioned each officer as three soldiers were assigned to escort them to the border. The soldier still bound was also assigned a guard, and a note was added to his belt bag. Before releasing them to head to the border, Kazu placed an enchantment on the officers and the creepy soldier. The enchantment is to notify Kazu if any die, and their location is broadcast every five minutes for the next 30 days. Kazu grabbed the creepy soldier by the face and added another enchantment before he was taken away to the rest of the soldiers. The last thing he did before they left was to give back their weapons so they could defend themselves during their trip.
An hour later, the soldiers were well on their way. After they all disappeared beyond the tree line, Kazu's team turned to head deeper into enemy territory, heading towards their base of operations, Anna's hometown.
Several hours later, as the day grows dim, they move off into the forest to set up camp for the night. After they set up three large six-person tents, Kazu pulled out some of the precooked food Lina had given him, and they all enjoyed an immediately available hot meal. After the meal, Kazu and Arwain took a stroll around the camp, setting up immobilizer traps and early warning alarms. Between Kazu's and Arwain's magical traps and alarms, there was no need for anyone to guard the camp. Mica, Johan, and Kristoph had a tent to themselves. Tara, Ari, Petal, and Orolfie shared a tent. The rest piled into Kazu's tent. With some of the girls lying on him, and the abundance of people in the tent, it quickly got hot and stuffy in there. Deciding to fix the issue, Kazu uses ice and wind magic to enchant the center pole of the tent, causing cool air to circulate throughout the tent, dropping the temperature to a comfortable level. Once the problem was fixed, it did not take long for everyone to fall asleep.