"Little girl, did you get separated from your family? Or were they captured by bandits?"
The young man patted the fine horse beneath him, swung down with an easy leap, and walked up to Hinata. "What happened?" he asked softly.
Bandits had once used children as bait, but that was an old trick from many years ago. These days, Konoha and the Land of Fire's officials were cracking down hard on such crimes, and caravans had learned how to tell whether a child was bait.
The little girl standing in the middle of the road in strange clothes looked confused. She had even warned them that bandits might be nearby. She seemed just like a...
"I'm a ninja..."
The young man's expression changed at once, and his hand instinctively moved toward the sword at his waist. But then he looked at Hinata and laughed.
"Little girl, you probably don't know this, but Konoha ninjas graduate at around twelve. They usually need another two or three years before they're allowed to take missions on their own."
"And any ninja your age would be famous. Their portraits would be all over the Money Exchanges. Anyone could recognize them at a glance."
"I really am a ninja. There's a band of vicious bandits holed up on the hill ahead."
To prove who she was and persuade this little caravan to stop, she took out the item Uchiha Jie had given her that morning.
When the young man saw the Forehead Protector Hinata had taken out, his eyes widened. It was a Forehead Protector, and judging by the symbol on it, it belonged to Konoha.
But it wasn't new. The band was faded, and yellowish stains from blood that hadn't been washed away marked it. The metal had fine scratches, but otherwise it was fairly clean.
"Pfft. Little girl, where'd you find that Forehead Protector?" The young man leaned in for a closer look and burst out laughing.
Even if the little girl in front of him were a once-in-a-century genius from Konoha, her Forehead Protector should at least be new.
"Did you find it somewhere, or did one of your elders give it to you to play with?" He crouched down and asked with a grin.
"M-my elder gave it to me," Hinata answered quietly. Though she had grown more outgoing lately, she was still somewhat reserved around strangers.
"Boss, what's going on?" Another guard came over and asked.
"A little girl with her elder's Forehead Protector says there might be a band of bandits on that hill." The young man tilted his head, looking unconcerned.
Then he turned to Hinata.
"How about this?" he said. "Looks like you got separated from your elder. Come with us to the town up ahead. We might run into some Konoha ninjas there. As for the bandits you mentioned, we'll keep an eye out."
Hinata's appearance made her hard to believe, and she couldn't argue with the young leader, so she nodded, already making up her mind.
She'd travel with this little caravan. If they ran into bandits, she could step in. If not, she could hitch a ride to town and gather information there.
Hinata climbed into an empty wagon. The young leader stopped paying attention to her and instead joined his guard. The two of them rode at the very front.
The drivers hauling the cargo behind them were silent. The tarps covering the wagons were tightly secured with ropes, and Hinata couldn't tell what they were carrying. Curious, she activated her Byakugan inside the wagon.
"Ah..."
There weren't many wagons, but they were piled with all kinds of valuable goods.
One wagon was crammed with exquisite ornaments. Some had already been damaged, but the haulers hadn't taken many precautions to protect them.
Another carried iron goods, from sickles and hoes to samurai swords and the Kunai used by ninjas. There were even two enormous spiked clubs. Just imagining one hitting someone was frightening.
There was another wagon carrying things she couldn't identify. They looked like parts of something, but just from how finely they were made, she could tell they weren't for anything ordinary.
She couldn't make much sense of the last wagon either. Ropes, nets, sacks, and all kinds of medicine bottles, along with several large barrels of liquid that even her Byakugan couldn't identify. It certainly wasn't water.
She rubbed her aching eyes and deactivated her Byakugan. Then, without making a sound, she swallowed a specially made Soldier Pill, calmed her mind, and began restoring her chakra so she'd be in top condition for any fight that might break out.
But the pill had barely finished dissolving when she sensed something was wrong. The road, which had been flat, grew bumpy. The wagon seemed to change direction, and its cabin tilted as if they were going uphill.
But the road should have followed the valley.
She wanted to lift the curtain and check outside, but then she heard the faint sound of hooves approaching the wagon.
Had someone come to ask her something?
The moment she lifted the curtain, she saw the young leader holding a small porcelain bottle with its cap freshly twisted off, reaching into the wagon.
She froze for a moment. The young man seemed surprised that Hinata had lifted the curtain just then, but he didn't hesitate for even an instant. He threw the bottle straight into the wagon. The colorless liquid spilled out and evaporated as soon as it touched the air.
Hinata finally reacted. She reached into her Ninja tool bag, took out a white pill, and put it in her mouth.
The bottle clearly contained poison or sleeping medicine. How could she have been so careless?
In a place where bandits might appear, having only two ordinary guards was far too little protection for even a small caravan. Besides, they weren't carrying cheap goods with little profit.
It seemed these people were the real bandits. They disguised themselves as a caravan and traveled this road back and forth. That way, they could lower the guard of other caravans and patrol constantly, letting them spot potential enemies and prey as quickly as possible.
At first, they hadn't meant Hinata any harm. She was just a little girl. Helping her find her family would also lull the officials in the nearby towns into a false sense of security.
But when Hinata took out the Konoha Forehead Protector, they began to suspect something was wrong. A ninja's Forehead Protector wasn't something that could simply be tossed aside. This little girl might well be a ninja using the Transformation Jutsu.
Yet when they looked at Hinata, something still didn't add up. If they'd already been discovered, there was no point in a ninja playing along with them. She could simply start killing them.
But if she hadn't realized anything was wrong, why was she pretending to be an innocent little girl?
In the end, they chose to take Hinata along. Whether or not she was a ninja, they wanted to keep everything under their control. So they used a sedative made specifically for ninjas and struck first.