- 60 - Finding the Bandits

By 5 PM, they reached Hinotama town. As they entered the town, Jiraiya said to the group, "We will save the mission for tomorrow. Tonight, we will stay in an inn."

The kids nodded their heads and followed him to an inn.

Upon entering the inn, Jiraiya spoke to the innkeeper as if he were familiar with him, and Izuna thought, 'I wonder if Sensei knows this guy?'

After a while of talking and catching up, Jiraiya paid the man, then turned around and handed a key to each of them, saying, "Each of you will have your own room. Just stay in the inn and don't go out and try to do anything. I'm going to go and scout out the bandit bases we will be hitting, so I'll be back in a couple of hours."

Izuna thought to himself, 'I wonder if he is really going to go scout out the bandits or if he is just going to go do his little hobby and visit a hot spring.'

Jiraiya then left, leaving the kids alone, and Hinoka asked, "So, what should we do now?"

Izuna was about to respond when Minato beat him to the punch and said, "Since we aren't allowed to do anything, I'm going to go to my room and meditate. Tomorrow, we will all likely kill our first human being, so we should prepare ourselves."

Hinoka's eyes went wide at this. She had been happy that they were finally going on a C-rank mission, but she hadn't really thought about what all that meant until now. She would have to kill someone for the first time. While she knew that one day she would inevitably take a life, now that it was here, she was a little nervous.

Izuna, hearing Minato's words, was also a little nervous. He thought to himself, 'I knew this day would come, but now that it's here… I just hope I'm ready.'

They then each went to their separate rooms and began to prepare for tomorrow. A couple of hours later, Jiraiya returned and treated everyone to a nice dinner.

The next day, they woke up bright and early at 6 a.m. The squad assembled outside the inn and moved out.

Their first target for the day was a bandit camp located around 30 kilometers to the south of the town.

Once they neared the camp, Jiraiya said to the group, "This is your mission, so you must figure out what to do and how to do it."

Hinoka looked up at Jiraiya and said, "But Sensei, we don't know where the bandit camp is."

Jiraiya just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Figure it out. These are things you must do on a mission."

Izuna spread out his senses and said, "I can sense a large group of civilians not too far from here. It is probably a village. Let's go and ask them what they know, and I'm sure they can point us toward the bandits."

The group nodded, then followed Izuna towards the village. When they entered the small village, they immediately noticed the signs of battle, with injured people walking around, cleaning up blood, and fixing the gate.

They asked around and quickly found the village chief's house. The house was old but large and in the center of the village. When they knocked on the door, an old man quickly opened it. Upon seeing the headbands, he respectfully invited them into his house and said, "Welcome to our village. Thank you for coming." He looked to Jiraiya, but it was Minato who spoke up first. He said, "We are here to deal with the bandits and were hoping you could point us in the right direction."

The old man's face lit up when he heard that and said, "Yes, yes, thank you so much. The bandits are 5 kilometers north of here in a small cave at the entrance of the valley. Please hurry. Just two days ago, they raided our village and killed 10 villagers and kidnapped 5 young girls…" The old man began to cry silently but quickly got ahold of himself and said, "Please bring us justice and try to save the girls if you can."

The group nodded in determination, ready to find and deal with the bandits more than ever.

Izuna then asked, "And how many bandits are there?"

"There are around 10 of them," the old man said.

Izuna nodded and said, "Don't worry, we will quickly deal with them. Thank you for the information." He then turned to the group and said, "Let's go."

They then moved north until they found the valley. Izuna activated his Sharingan and quickly found their tracks, and once they got closer, Hinoka, who had her Byakugan activated, said, "I can see them. Their cave is up ahead."

Izuna then asked, "How many bandits do you see?"

"There are 11 of them," Hinoka replied.

Minato asked, "Who is going to deal with them?"

Izuna stepped forward and said, "How about I take this one, and one of you can get the next one." They still had more bandit bases to deal with today, so it didn't really matter who started; they would all have their fair share by the end of the day.

Minato and Hinoka both nodded, and they slowly closed in on the bandit's cave.

Once they got closer, Izuna saw the cave and that the group was at least smart enough to have some people guarding the cave. There was one person above the cave looking over the valley, and they had two people guarding the mouth of the cave.

Izuna looked to Jiraiya and asked, "Sensei, do you have any advice?"

Jiraiya shook his head and said, "I want to see how you guys will deal with this, so just go for it."

Izuna nodded his head and asked Hinoka, "Can you look and see if there are any traps and tell me the layout of the cave?"

Hinoka, with her Byakugan, looked into the cave and said, "There doesn't seem to be any traps, and the layout is three rooms. The two on the left are smaller, with two people each in them, and the room on the right is larger, and there seem to be four people in there, sitting around a table."

Izuna nodded his head and said, "Okay, I'm going in. Wish me luck."

He then made sure he was physically prepared, and once he realized he was, he mentally prepared himself for what he was about to do, then got ready to move.