"He appears to have run away…" Meiko observed with nonchalant innocence that was almost admirable and whimsical.
"No, really? Hanshin couldn't tell over the deafening silence to his call." The special jounin wrapped his hands over his chest and looked away, pouting his lips and souring his eyebrows as if posing for a photo of a momentous occasion.
Meiko grinned, stretching her face out to the sides like a simian. She was pretty amused by how irritated her superior got over something this trivial.
"Well? Can you tell where he's gone?" Hanshin turned to Mana.
"Not quite, his chakra remained suppressed the whole time and he doesn't appear to be using the mind controlling weapon anymore. It's almost as if he's realized what was giving him away." Mana shook her head. She had to hand it to the spy, his use of the Chakra Suppression Jutsu was impressive. The magician had no trouble picking up chakra of civilians yet it was troublesome to tell the chakra of this man from a rock.
"Figures…" Hanshin sighed. The man placed his palm to his forehead and rubbed his temples. A sign of frustration of having lost the enemy after managing to disrupt their plan somewhat, now it was back to square one. "Look out for surprise attacks. He might not even be gone, if Mana cannot sense him either way, we won't be able to tell."
"Huh? Wouldn't just revealing himself be really stupid right now?" Kiyomi pondered, questioning Hanshin's judgment.
"Maybe, then again, Hanshin knows nothing about that eel. When you do not know the enemy's plan, any course of action might seem crazy, because you don't know what they're doing." Hanshin replied.
Mana was too embarrassed by the fact that after all the chakra sensory sharpening and specialized training she still managed to lose a target, even one with quite refined skill at the Chakra Suppression Jutsu, Kiyomi and Hanshin were too busy with pity banter, trying to bite each other in the behind to notice Meiko casually walking up to the unconscious, jawless spy and reaching down behind his belt. Only when the blacksmith pulled out a shimmering, metallic plate attached to a piece of damaged and damp with blood red cloth did the Konoha party notice the genius in its simplicity discovery of the blacksmith.
"It's a headband protector…" Kiyomi yelled out in disbelief. "I can't believe how stupid those guys were!"
"It's not like the headband was in plain view. The spy was trying to conceal it under his clothes. He likely trusted his comrades to dispose of his body if he ever got taken out." Mana tipped the front of her top hat so that her eyes could better examine the shiny accessory. She had hidden most of her upper face to hide the embarrassment she felt over the failure to track the spy and prevent his escape.
"I wanted to nab this earlier, it would have given Hanshin an opening. Imagine how flustered those two would have gotten…" Meiko laughed out with wickedness in her expression. Without a shadow of a doubt, the scenario she had described was flashing through her eyes. Given the concentration training that the young woman went through with Mana, her imagination was vivid.
Just about everything associated with this fight gone wrong. Mana got her mind all tangled into some strange method of mind control she couldn't immediately shake off despite all of her devoted illusionary training tempering her mind to where she could do complex problem solving while affected by brain-melting fever. Then she hurt a whole bunch of these poor Yordalarans who were also, not unlike her, puppeteered by the foreign spies…
"Ummm… Excuse me but… What the hell is going on? What about the election?" one of the still conscious Yordalarans approached the team of Konoha ninja with the question that undoubtedly singed in all of their minds.
"You've got your answer right here." Hanshin pointed his finger at the Iwagakure headband dangling in Meiko's grip like a hypnotic pendulum. Due to a rather weighty revelation of the fact of Iwagakure's involvement, it had a very similar effect to that of its comparative counterpart…
"I don't think I understand…" the Yordalaran looked baffled by the headband and the further implications.
"Tsk… What a simpleton… The Iwagakure has sent spies to disorganize your settlement. They made your election into a charade, granted, we will find out why or how." Hanshin grumped out. From the stern face of the special jounin, it appeared as if he was about to strike the man down as was his usual temperamental nature but he satisfied himself by just sneering at the poor chubby with a mocking pair of eyes.
"It's clear why they did what they did – the conflict with the Kumogakure over the coltan market has been making Iwagakure desperate for some time now…" Mana closed her eyes. Once she opened them, she had turned her face to look directly at the unconscious Iwagakure spy. "All may not be lost yet. We can still interrogate this man."
"I cannot interrogate him while he's unconscious. The Yamanaka clan style interrogation is a communication between two minds." Kiyomi shut the magician's suggestion down.
"No, I know you're a superior interrogator than me but… I want to give it a shot." Mana shook her head and looked at Kiyomi with a plead. "My interrogation technique is more generic, while less potent, it does not necessarily require a conscious and intact mind."
"This is kind of pointless, we will be wasting time on this trash. Wouldn't you rather try to find the runaway spy and try to find out what the Iwagakure spies are up to here?" Kiyomi didn't appear to understand the nature of Mana's plead at all. It was not that Mana was confident in her ability to obtain any useful knowledge from the unconscious spy, more often than not her interrogation attempts ended in her getting kicked out from the guest mind rather violently, that being said, she needed some hint of control back in her life.
Messing up so often on a battlefield this important and coming the closest she's ever come to accidentally taking a life had rendered Mana hopeless. It brought back that nagging doubt that kept on whispering that nothing will ever be right again. No matter what she'd do, it would end in failure, just like she'd failed here. Perhaps with just this small victory here some semblance of sense could have been established…
"It can't hurt to give Mana a shot." Meiko stepped up and placed her hand onto Kiyomi's shoulder. There she was… Of all people around, Meiko would have known exactly what Mana was going through. It was odd that despite being very little alike, the two friends often found themselves relating to each other with a surprising degree of accuracy.
"This is wasting Hanshin's time!" the special jounin swiped his arm aside utilizing his flair for the dramatic and astounding posing abilities. "Come, Yamanaka-girl, we will find that creepy overcoat bastard and kill him ourselves. You two can do whatever."
"W-Wait, you can't mean that…" Mana jumped up. The last thing she wanted with her suggestion to properly attempt and interrogate the unconscious ally was to split the team apart. While they did not yet know all of the details of the exact degree of infiltration within the Yordalaran society of the Iwagakure spies, splitting up was still the worst idea.
"Sorry, Mana…" Kiyomi shook her head. "It's not like we're saying goodbye or anything…"
Mana closed her eyes before calming herself and looking back at her friend. Seemingly without the magician's control, her hand rose up and touched the Yamanaka's shoulder. "I know. Killing rogues is your dream, isn't it? Spies may not be rogue ninja, they are quite useful to their own country but… From Konoha's point of view, what's the difference, right?"
Kiyomi nodded, she did not look overly excited about splitting but her professional side agreed with Hanshin wholeheartedly and the blonde was not about to ignore that. After sharing friendly stare downs with Mana, the Yamanaka turned to Meiko and nudged the blacksmith on the shoulder.
"You watch that oaf. If she gets a nosebleed or something, kick her shin or bite her cheek as hard as you can. You'll like it, they're sweet like a cucumber…" Kiyomi said before rushing after Hanshin. It was not like the special jounin was waiting around for the young woman, as usual, he was just doing his thing.
"That Hanshin… Crazy strong but with a temper to boot…" Meiko stretched out feeling the after-battle laziness setting in.
"That must be why he's just a special jounin. His skill in his unique chakra armor technique, general power and speed are bordering those of an A-Rank ninja, if not higher." Mana nodded. "However a jounin is more than just a powerhouse. Someone of such elite rank must be a great team player, capable of managing a team of genin or lead a team of chuunin into a mission of great importance, one deserving the involvement of just such a team. I have a feeling that Hanshin-san may have had an ulterior motive by agreeing to work with us…"
"Like what? Ranking up to jounin?" Meiko wondered.
Mana nodded. "Hanshin-san's confidence in his own abilities struck me as those of a person who would aim to climb as high up as possible. He does wish power and fame that comes with the higher ranks but to get there he must stomach working with a team or even managing one. This mission is as much of a test to him as it is to us but his test is not if he can handle a mission of such grave importance, it is a much more personal one."
Meiko chuckled. The blacksmith stretched out her body, alleviating some of the post-battle fatigue and aches that she felt all over her body by letting the cramped bloody circulate all through her bumps and bruises. "We were sufficient for Hanshin to step over himself. He felt he could work with us… That's pretty cool."
It seemed like wasting any more time would have been unwise. The more time Hanshin and Kiyomi spent by themselves without knowing the full picture of what was going on in Yordalar, the higher their risk of getting into trouble. Even someone as amazing as Hanshin risked losing their head if caught unprepared, especially against someone with an unpredictable and dangerous ability like that of the enemy spy.
Mana approached the unconscious Iwagakure ninja, while the Konoha ninja were talking their plans over, the Yordalarans were getting their military together. Men with massive polearms approached the spy and while a handful of them held their weapons to the spy's throat, carefully poking at the exposed tongue and roof of the mouth of the man out of curiosity, a pair of them raised their weapons to execute the man.
"Stop! We must interrogate this man first!" Mana yelled out, rushing in between the moving blades of the polearms. Like clockwork, the weapons stopped right up and around the magician's body. It looked pretty suspenseful and exciting, just like one of her magic tricks…
"Move away. You have no voice in the matter, a woman who is a champion of the Sun Disc and an entertainer of the Sheikhs… We need no mind control to stay clear from that sort of people." One of the Yordalarans freaked out.
"That's right, you may have helped us out a little bit here but that doesn't change the fact you are foreigners that destroyed the Kannabi Bridge, ruined a family's sacred meal, stole food off of a stall that was completely free and traumatized many of our men with unseen cruelty!" another one added, he moved his blade up closer to the magician as an attempt to psyche Mana out but the magician did not budge one inch from her location making the man himself freeze up and psyche out. His body got thrown out of balance as he did not mean to cut the young woman at all but very nearly did so.
"Cut her some slack, you guys…" Meiko approached the scene. "She was mind controlled, just like all of you guys."
"They remember all of those things…" Mana mumbled to herself, her mind became temporarily distracted from the quarrel of attempting to save the life of this Iwagakure spy and became focused on what this implication meant. "The Yordalarans remember the compromising material that the spies used against us, they also feel it is compromising while broken out of the mind control. That means that they were not mind controlled the entire time. The Iwagakure spies had been planting other kinds of seeds as well, their plan extends farther than just this election…"
"Huh… Do we go back, alert Kiyomi and Hanshin? That Kiyomi, turned off her mental link, catching up to her will be such a hassle…" Meiko lamented more as a general annoyance than a genuine gripe.
"No, if we leave this man to the Yordalarans, they will kill him for sure. I'm sure that they will discover it all by themselves, Kiyomi is a much more skilled interrogator than me." Mana shook her head before turning back to the Yordalarans.
"We will kill this spy either way." One of the Yordalaran soldiers stepped up. The more time passed, the more polearms became pointed at Mana instead of the unconscious spy.
"Yeah," another Yordalaran soldier raised his weapon, preparing himself to go through Mana just so he could cut this jawless man's head off for what he saw as justice. "This man tried to…"
"You don't know what he tried to do. Nobody knows yet. You don't know how many allies he has in this village or what they're doing right now." Mana stepped up closer to the blades, just inches away from where they could have hurt her if the Yordalarans decided to do that. The whole time she kept tabs on the Yordalarans behind her who were dangerously close to the unconscious spy as well. "I understand that you need to behead this man for some fake sense of security and justice but if you ignore the chance to learn more, to know for sure that the danger is over – none of it will matter."
"What do you know of justice!?" a Yordalaran from behind Mana got furious, he stepped forward, thrusting his polearm at her. It did not appear like the man was bloodthirsty or wanted to kill the young woman but he did perceive her as paper-thin, he figured that she'd step out of their way the moment the threat got real. She did not.
A flesh piercing sound made the Yordalarans quiver in shock, with the mind control that had its grip on them gone, one of theirs had just impaled the Konoha kunoichi atop of his polearm. Even the soldier himself looked visibly shaken. Meiko just stared at the scene with an emotionless gaze, she had seen Mana in action far too many times to be fooled by that trick again. The uncertainty of when the magician was being an idiot while risking her life and when she had slipped away from certain death was what made fighting Mana this difficult.
"We came here to start new, to figure out what Yordalar should be from this point on. We wanted none of your politics and wars… Just to move on while preserving what united us as people." The soldier wept, almost like he pleaded forgiveness to the lifeless body hanging on his polearm. The body blurred and faded away like a mirage. The soldiers all took a wary step back.
"L-Look at the body, it's gone!" one of the Yordalarans pointed their finger at the ground where only a bloody puddle laid mixed into the dirt but the jawless body of the Iwagakure spy was no longer present. The circle of conscious Yordalarans tightened while they struggled to process what had just transpired, then the men turned their ire at Meiko – the only remaining foreign invader and a thief of free snacks.
"Oh… I think I missed my cue to leave…" Meiko grinned, she waved for the crowd of Yordalarans before her body flickered away in an instant. The escape that the blacksmith thought would be so simple was hindered by the fact that her body felt numb and powerless. A Yordalaran soldier dashed up in front of her, outracing her Body Flicker of flawed execution and swinging his polearm to smack Meiko down.
The blacksmith ducked under the swing and focused all of what little remained of her bodily integrity for another dash. She needed more time to regain some strength, at the moment bashing blazing with chakra flames meteors and fighting off a whole settlement of super-powered civilians was a bit too much on her system. Meiko leaped forward, air flowed freely through her cheeks and fondled her hair but the alleviating feeling of getting free was hindered by something rough hitting her feet – another Yordalaran tripped her up.
"Your comrade stole a criminal that warrants the death penalty and we have information that she is an ally for the Sheikhs of the Wind Country. For the sake of the new Yordalar, you Konoha ninja must leave our settlement and surrender the jawless spy to us." The Yordalaran soldier that tripped Meiko up declared while pointing the weapon at the blacksmith.
The blacksmith gritted her teeth. A small orb that she clutched in between her two fingers popped from the meager pressure applied to it creating a cloud of smoke. A tar-black cloud that swallowed up both the gritting blacksmith as well as the Yordalaran crew and the battlefield around them in smoke to be used for cover.
"Split out, cover the edges of the cloud and stop the Konoha ninja from escaping!" the Yordalarans presumed to be in a position to bark orders at each other. The soldiers scattered across the battlefield, watching the exists just as they had planned but time went on, the cover of the smoke grew more and more transparent before fading away entirely and the blacksmith was nowhere to be seen.
"How could we have lost her?" one of the soldiers grunted.
"These people are ninja, intelligence gathering, stealth and escape are their forte, just find them and kick them out of this village. We cannot rebuild until we know for certain all the foreigners are gone and we are left to our own." Another one replied.
After the soldiers had left, scattering across the village in tight, three-person formations to filter the place for foreigners, no matter if they were from Konoha or Iwagakure, a loud pop resonated through the battlefield and with a much smaller cloud of dust and dirt dissolving, Meiko rose from the ground and looked at a poor, unconscious soul beside her that she used her Transformation Jutsu to mimic.
"Mana's probably waiting…" she grunted to herself while working through her aching sides and fatigue. It was a bit embarrassing to be too worn out to outrace a bunch of settlers too quick and strong for their own good but at least she avoided getting captured…