Summary: She looked up at her once teammate and said, "Lies. All lies." Because that was what she had been taught to do. Lie.

Rating: T, or 13-15 but swearing will be heavy later in the story, along with violence .If you can't stand any of that I suggest you click the back button.

Genre: Drama/Adventure/Romance

Author: Lielka

Author's notes:

Please vote the pairing you want on my profile.

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Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Naruto, however I own the plotline of this fanfic.

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Key:

Italics= flashback or emphasis on a word

"…"= talking

Last time…

Suddenly, continuing to walk on in a sleepy doze, Hinata walked into the taller of the two men who had still not introduced himself.

He turned his head to glare at her and Hinata quickly straightened up. "We're there."

Now that she was looking, Hinata could see buildings through the thinning trees and shivered. Her fate would depend on what happened in the small dingy town up the path.

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Hinata nervously walked into the village, attracting quite a few stares from the people on the streets. In her hand she had the roughly drawn sketch of directions to the local inn and the paper with the bounty, and she reflected on what she had been ordered to do.

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They had stopped just in front of the village for Kakuzu to explain Hinata's task. At the moment he was holding a paper with a photo of a man on it, and 400,000 written underneath. The man was called Chishiki Warui and was a nukenin from Iwagakure, as symbolised by the scratched hitae ate.

"Go through the village while following this." The masked man was now drawing some rough scribbles on the back of the paper. "Get the man from the picture to come here. I don't care how. Lie, beat him up and drag him here. Any method will do." Hinata looked quite scared. "Just don't show him the picture."

And so the seven-year old had toddled into the village to lure out a chunin nukenin when she had barely been in the academy for half a year, where all she had learnt was mostly theory and throwing weapons.

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The further she walked, the more people would stare at her, either men with hangovers who leered at the small girl, men without hangovers who leered at her, or children with nothing better to do.

One of the children came up to the near terrified girl and asked. "My name's Iro. What's your name?" "I-it's Hinata. D-do you know w-where the inn is?" "Sure." The boy replied. "You turn right at the end of this road and a long way down it you'll find it. Nobody's gonna be awake though except those weird strangers."

"Weird strangers?" "Yeah I mean really weird. My dad told me to stay away from them." At that point, a teenage girl walking to the inn who had overheard their conversation spoke sharply to the children. "Stay away from those men. They're shinobi and nukenin to boot." Her voice was laced with venom when she said the word shinobi.

Both children looked shocked, although for different reasons. Iro looked shocked because the shinobi looked very much like the men in this village, except with different clothes. He had imagined them differently, more like bodybuilders or someone similar.

Hinata's thoughts were another story altogether. She had never heard the term shinobi been put so negatively, and was asking herself why these people seemed to hate them.

Pulling herself out of her musings Hinata turned to the boy. "I have to go now. Maybe I'll see you again someday." Iro jolted from his thoughts and looked sad. "Promise you'll visit?" "Ok. I'll come back someday." Hinata doubted it. She didn't even know where this village was, let alone able to find it if she wandered into the forests.

Giving a small wave, the girl continued towards the inn, which could hardly be classified as such. It was dingy, reeked of piss, smoke and beer and a musky something that Hinata couldn't define as she stepped inside.

The only people as far as she could see were some men with long faces sitting at a corner table… with clothes similar to those the shinobi in her village wore.

She looked at them timidly, trying to spot the man she had seen on the picture, which she had tucked away some time earlier, when she heard light, barely-there footsteps coming down the stairs. The other men had noticed her by now and were staring at Hinata menacingly. One of them stood up and growled down at her. "What the hell are you doing here, gaki?!?"

Hinata looked terrified, but, as if her life depended on it she mustered up the courage to stutter a description of the man on the bounty. The man looked suspicious. "What d'you want our boss for, huh?"

The quickly came up with the best excuse she could find and stuttered it out, and thankfully the man chalked it up to nervousness and not lying. "M-my master w-wants to t-t-talk to him about a-a job."

Just then a voice called from the stairs. "What's all the flippin' noise about Hiroshi. I've still got a fucking nasty headache." The other man (apparently called Hiroshi), pointed to Hinata and said. "This brat wants to talk with you 'bout a job or somethin'."

"Oh really." Warui, as Hinata recognized him from the picture, didn't sound convinced. Hurriedly Hinata repeated what she had said to Hiroshi to Warui. His reply to it was. "What's the job and how much's the pay?"

Hinata nervously pushed her fingers together. "U-uh th-tha's why my master wants to speak to you."

Warui snorted. "Fine then! Lead me to your master, but hurry it up. I still have a shitty headache." He obviously didn't regard the little girl and her master a threat, since no nukenin would ordinarily be so trusting to go with someone they didn't know. Unfortunately for him, such carelessness cost many people their lives soon to be including his own.

They walked back through the village, being stared at even more than before. Iro thankfully wasn't there to ask Hinata more questions and she felt relieved as she had hated to lie to him.

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Outside the village gates Kakuzu was sitting in a tree, waiting for the girl to come back with the shinobi… or for screams to sound from the village. Screams of pain from the Hyuga, screams of terror and hysteria from the villagers or screams of bloodlust from rogues. The latter expectation was part of the reason why the shinobi's bounty was so high.

The man controlled a skilled group of bandits and nukenin through his knowledge of warfare, shinobi skills etc. Well anyway he wouldn't be a match for Kakuzu if he came alone. That's also why he sent the brat out to fetch the man. She looked and was innocent, so people would trust her more than two cloaked men with hitae ates, signifying them as shinobi.

If he remembered correctly, the people in this area also had an avid hate of nin because of the great shinobi wars. This was one of the main areas where shinobi had battled so it had been a hard blow to the local economy, and of course their population. Just one of the many reasons these people hated shinobi.

He would be killing the man by himself as Daiko had yet again gone off to get some food. Ridiculously expensive and fancy food. Just thinking about the waste made his blood boil.

He was torn out of his anger-filled thoughts by the sight of two figures walking towards the village gate. So, she had managed to do it after all and was worth keeping.

The two walked through the gate and continued on walking. The Hyuga with small, fast steps, and Tarui or whatever his name was strolling behind her with a rolling gait.

With a shunshin, Kakuzu flickered behind the chunin and swung a hardened fist at the other man, who immediately ducked and took a kunai from his pouch, turning around and swinging at Kakuzu, who stilled, and allowed the kunai to hit him. Warui's triumphant smirk disappeared as soon as it came when the kunai hit Kakuzu's skin and didn't sink in. Instead, a ringing sounded, clear as a bell, as if the kunai had struck stone and a shudder ran through Warui's arm. Now it was Kakuzu's turn to smirk as he grabbed Warui's throat to hold him still whilst letting a thread pierce the man right through the head.

Letting the body drop he turned to the frozen Hyuga. "My name is Kakuzu and the organization's name is Akatsuki. My partner's name is Daiko."

Hinata's eyes widened in surprise. Did that mean that she…? "You're now my subordinate. Come." He lead her to a clearing off the main path, promptly turning towards her. "Can you use your Byakugan and how far can you see with it?" As an answer Hinata activated it. "A-about three metres."

Kakuzu snorted. "Work on that then while we're waiting for my partner. Remember this: Time is money, and to get by in life, you need money. So don't waste time." He sat down and took out a bag from the insides of his cloak. She stared at it with her Byakugan, puzzled, because what was inside looked like lots of pieces of paper wrapped in bundles. However, as soon as he took one out it turned out to be bundles of money, and he started counting it.

"Well." He glared at her. "Start training."

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Roughly three hours later Daiko came back to a snoozing Hyuga and an impatient partner. Hinata had collapsed from lack of sleep and food (the last time she had eaten properly was before she had been kidnapped), about an hour ago, and Kakuzu wanted to get to the bounty collection station as quickly as possible. After all, he had more of them to collect.

Daiko though (much to Kakuzu's further annoyance), insisted that they sit down to eat and have a rest afterwards. It wasn't because Hinata was there, oh no, Daiko insisted upon such frivolous things regularly. If this continued, Kakuzu would be rid of his fifth partner thanks to his temper, which frayed and flared very easily when it came to some subjects (aka money).

Once the delicious meal was consumed, and Daiko had had his break (one hour) they walked on.

To be continued…

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Author's notes:

As per the original Japanese, I will write surnames first, so Chishiki is the nukenin's surname (just in case I've confused anyone).

Oh, and I'm following the manga storyline, not the anime because of the fillers. (I hate most of them)

Translations and definitions:

Warui
-translation: bad

Chishiki
-translation: knowledge

Iro
-translation: colour

Iwagakure no Sato
-translation: Hidden Village in the rock/stone
-definition: same as Kumogakure except in earth country

Gaki
-translation: brat

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Next chapter: Hinata's first trip to a bounty collection station and meeting other members. What's this? A new member appears?

R&R

Lielka