The merchant family had some business to do while in town, so we stayed for an extra day. I was a little annoyed at having my mission to the Land of Snow delayed, but the family was fine with my team being transformed while traveling, and it was only one day. Delays like this were common on escort missions.

  When I was working as a member of the Twelve Guardian Ninja, I loved these delays and encouraged them whenever I could. Guarding one location for multiple days was much easier than guarding multiple locations for one day each. It gave me time to breathe and sneak in some training while I had a skilled team to rely on.

  I sent my students to act as a guard for each member of the family while I stayed with the wagon. In reality, I just moved the wagon into an unused corner of the stables at the inn we were staying at and placed a camouflage seal on it. The horses were placed in pens right next to the wagon and would make a noise if anyone got near.

  Even the inn’s staff forgot that there was a wagon filled with supplies and merchandise parked right next to their stable. I paid for a room on the second floor that looked out to the exact spot of the wagon, and let me check if anyone was sniffing around. I sat at my room’s desk, looking out the window while I worked.

  I was taking the time I had been given to think of ways I was going to handle the Land of Snow mission. The priority was to get my hands on the ninja tech the Land was researching. The Daimyo wanted the daughter of the previous ruler to legitimize his claim to the throne, or to kill her, and to make sure no upstarts popped up in the future.

  It would be great if I could guarantee the girl’s safety in her homeland. First, for moral reasons, but second was to cause strife in their land. If the new Daimyo ruled with an iron fist, I would only have to make a deal with him. A prospect that could be easier and cheaper in the long run. However, if I encouraged a faction of the old ruler's followers to rise up, using the princess as their figurehead, I had multiple avenues to address any problem.

  There was also the bloodline ability issue. Keep the girl alive, and she will continue her line, so will the new lord. More descendants mean more opportunities to study their unique abilities. But that also means they could eventually create a powerful shinobi in the future. Sometimes, weak villages just need one powerful shinobi to catapult themselves to greatness.

  I could play this many ways, but my desire to keep my options open decided how I'm going to play my hand in advance. If a trained operative in courtly matters knows I'm going to the Land of Snow, then they could guess my every action before I even set foot in the country. I am going to need some real leverage if I want to get the best results I can.

  The military strength of the Leaf is one thing, but the village is too far away to be perceived as a threat to the Land of Snow, and the new Daimyo is already practicing isolationism. He doesn't have any meaningful foreign allies I could put pressure on to encourage negotiations. After thinking for a few minutes, I decided I would have to find something to use when I entered the land. At the end of the day, I don't have all the information I would need to come up with a plan of attack I could rely on.

  After some time, I decided to find my students and the merchants they were guarding. I wanted to let them move around without my supervision for a little while, but they are scheduled to return to the inn in roughly fifteen minutes, and in my experience, trouble tends to strike toward the end of a shift rather than the beginning or middle. I did one more sweep of the inn's grounds and then left to find my students.

  The girls were eating at a cafe; they had some shopping bags on a chair with them. The contents looked like clothes, and at second glance, I saw clothes that would fit Lemitsu with them. I guess I now knew what my two female students were spending their hospital money on. With the waiter bringing out more snack cakes for the table, the ladies were going to be late back at the inn. I would reprimand them when they got back and not within earshot of the clients later for their tardiness, but for now, I would let them enjoy their cake.

  I was able to find Lemitsu and the client in a shadier part of town. It wasn't the bad part of town, but it was the part that acted like a middleman for the bad part—the middleman between legitimate and nefarious businesses. The husband looked like he was negotiating with what I had to guess was a member of organized crime. Lemitsu was transformed into a random merchant and was still guarding the client. He looked nervous but was trying his best to hide it.

  I could tell Lemitsu didn't completely understand what was being discussed between the two men, but was able to tell that the merchant husband was making a deal with a shady guy. The shady guy was clearly a member of some gang and could tell Lemitsu was a bodyguard, but couldn't tell he was a ninja. Watching for a few minutes, I understood what was happening.

  The merchant was using the fact that he had bodyguards to transport more expensive cargo without worrying about losing it. I also suspect that he was either planning on purposely acting as bait to gather attention from dangerous criminals so that my team would apprehend them, and he would get a chance at their bounties, or that he could just get away scot-free.

  Looking at the deal playing out, I decided to make a plan of my own. After confirming the deal was going to go through and that the girls were still eating, I decided to leave the team a note. It said I was being called back to the village temporarily and that they should continue with the planned route, and I would catch up when I can.

  Watching the girls return first, I saw them pick up the note and read its contents. They freaked out a little, but seeing the mission had been quiet until this point, they only shrugged their shoulders and informed the wife of my absence. She seemed annoyed but not that inconvenienced.

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  Lemitsu and the husband made it back later with a small handcart filled with crates of something I would investigate later. I told Lemitsu in advance where the wagon was, and after a few minutes, he found it. He loaded the boxes while the husband went to speak with his wife.

  The man started freaking out at my absence and claimed to my students that he had paid for a whole team to protect his family, but my students pointed out the contract he signed said that in case of emergencies, a ninja may be called back to his village. After some back and forth, the husband gave up and decided they would leave in the morning to continue the journey.

  ***

  The next morning, I watched my students get up and prepare for departure. It took longer than it needed to because they were still inexperienced with traveling outside of the village, but between the three of them, they managed to get everything ready to go. The three were holding out hope that I was going to return, but I stayed out of sight so I could keep watching how they performed without me around.

  The merchant family woke up and, after some brief complaints that I wasn't back yet, they eventually still took off. I followed the group out of the town while keeping watch of the surroundings. The trip was tense, but uneventful for the first three hours out of town. Hour four was when things started to get interesting.

  I caught a scout for a bandit group keeping a lookout. I watched him from the cover of the trees, and when he saw the wagon my students were protecting, he skittered off to his camp. I followed the thin man; he had shabby facial hair and a crooked nose from getting it broken too many times. He carried a long and slightly rusted knife in a holster.

  The man didn't think anyone was tailing him, so I quickly guessed where he was going. I went ahead of him and discovered a hidden campsite that was in front of a cave. My rough head count was around thirty bandits. It looked like they had no sponsors backing them, nor were they army deserters. Either they were farmers who had a bad harvest and had taken up banditry to subsidize their village, or they were career criminals.

  Before the scout had made it back to his camp, I investigated the lot of them. First, I was half right, as half of them were farmers who had recently had a bad harvest, but the other half were bandits who were hired by their poor village to help them rob other villages. There were forty bandits in total; twenty were farmers, while the others were true professionals. They stayed in the cave while the farmers were outside in tents.

  Sneaking into the cave, I discovered cages of women I suspected were victims of previous raids on the road. Carefully, I used one of my bandages to slither in and match the body temperature of the women. Once it made contact with their exposed skin, I ran a diagnostic on them. After a few minutes, I concluded that most of the women would need basic medical care and home rest, at least for their physical health.

  One was beaten badly, and she would have been dead by the end of the day if I hadn't taken action. Her ribs had been stomped on too hard, and bone fragments had pierced something vital. After putting the girls under a sleep genjutsu, I fed them a ration pill and a trickle of water.

  Once I was done with the prisoners, I moved deeper into the cave. This was the resting area for the professional bandits. Some were reading and writing letters, but most were gambling, sleeping, or eating. One looked like their leader, and he was reading a report of some kind. The professional bandits seemed to be connected to an organized crime ring, most likely the same one my client spoke with yesterday.

  Reading a discarded report from a week ago, I discovered that they were smuggling jewelry for currency. It was a way to clean the money of organized crime, and they were doing it between the elemental lands to hide their movement. The cargo that my client got yesterday was most likely jewelry that he was going to sell and then come back to split the profits.

  But from the way the scout was acting, this group was going to betray the organization and steal the jewelry. They were going to kill my clients and take the jewelry for themselves. They will then report back to the town and claim the merchants made it safely to their destination, and when they never come back with the money, claim they don't know what happened and that the merchants must have stolen the goods.

  Leaving the bandits to their own devices, I went further into the cave's armory. Simple swords and spears made up most of it, but there were a few crossbows that looked well-kept. I sabotaged those first. I messed with the bow so that any shot fired from it would screw to the left. Then I shaved away at the triggers so after the third shot, the things would snap.

  The swords and spears I kept simple and blunted the edges of. They were about as effective as prop weapons for a play. I considered doing more, but I decided against it. I left the cave and decided to perch up on a tree branch not too far away and wait for the scout to finally arrive.

  ***

  The Flaming Tiger gang would never know it was me. For years, I was their errand boy, their attack dog, but no longer. After I got news that the gang decided to give the shipment to some no-name merchant to transport over the border, I knew this was me, and my men's best shot to get out from under their thumb.

  A commotion stirred from outside the cave's entrance, and I knew that was Wax. I sent him out to keep a lookout for when the idiot was out of the town. I stood up from my seat and placed down the report on how much I could expect from the girls. No families came forward to pay any ransom, and I didn’t want to keep them here any longer. They were fun at first, but they were getting old and stale, and it was best to get fresh meat every now and again.

  I walked past the pens and confirmed my suspicions, all the girls were completely out of it. They once screamed whenever they heard me coming, but now they were all sound asleep. Once they were sold off, the next guy could figure out what to do with them.

  Wax was at the mouth of the cave as I approached; he was completely out of breath and was wheezing. “Boss, I came as fast as I could. I found them, only five of them, and no guards.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Ha, no way, I am way too fast and stealthy for that. I’m practically a ninja.”

  “Hmm, good. We will leave the farmers here and take the crew. Rest up, drink some water, and then you will guide us to them.” Wax whined that he was tired from running up here, but I ignored him. I went back into the cave to deliver the good news.

  “Oh, you sorry lot. Get ready, we've got a job to do.” The idiots complained that they were busy and wanted to strike at night. “I don’t care what you want, I want my money, and I ain't going to wait for nightfall. Grab your weapons and get ready. We are finally going to make it big, and I ain't gonna let any of you hold me back.”

  I went to the armory and grabbed my crossbow and sword. I kept good care of them both, and by the time I was done by the end of today, I would have gotten my money’s worth out of them. After fifteen minutes, I had everybody ready.

  Wax was still complaining that he was tired, but after I threatened to run him through with my sword, he found his second wind. I led twenty men to the main road and, after a brief trip, finally found what I was looking for. Wax was right: five people and a baby. Two men and three women, no bodyguards. This was going to be easy.