With everything she had come to learn in mind, Mana traversed around the fur tents and wooden houses. The primitive manner of architecture and design of the settlement made sneaking around Yordalar much more difficult than it had been to move around a ninja village. There were no alleyways to speak, every movement had to be carefully weighed in and judged in the context of hundreds of pairs of eyes looking around in every direction.

Just a good hour later after the turned violent attempt to get rid of the Konoha ninja from their settlement, the Yordalarans were just about beginning to return to the routine. There appeared to be little to no ill will in their eyes and none of the unified hatred they had when the bunch tried to chase the team of Konoha ninja out.

Mana had almost no doubt that Meiko and Kiyomi managed to successfully evade attention long enough to hide. She could sense their chakra a pair of kilometers away from her position, sadly, just far enough for Mana to be easily able to confirm the presence of the chakra signal but too far away for her to tell too much about the specifics of said signal. She could still identify and attribute them to Kiyomi and Meiko but she couldn't tell if the kunoichi were calm or flustered, still fighting someone off or trying to elude attention.

She'd just have to trust their skills and hope they did repeat Mana's success. Hanshin always was the more troublesome one. It did not appear like the special jounin was in any mood whatsoever to hide, whether he knocked every single Yordalaran in the settlement out or got himself beaten up and captured, which was unlikely, his situation was still the one that raised the most trouble.

Now that the spies have managed to make the Konoha ninja public enemy No. 1, they were going to have an extreme time trying to complete their mission. Given how well the spies knew these people, how they managed to turn the entire settlement against the Konoha ninja in just a handful of hours and how much they knew about the team from Konoha implied that the spies were no rookies and that they may have been operating in this settlement for a while. Certainly long enough to have absorbed the local attitudes and long enough to know how the locals would react, say, to an unstable, egotistical fool tripping over a child during a polite, all-family lunch.

It may have been better if Mana did not rush to reconnect with her team. She knew she told Meiko and Kiyomi she'd find them but… What of it if she did, exactly? Three people, let alone four, were immensely difficult to conceal and moving in such a group would pretty much guarantee another discovery and yet another settlement-wide manhunt. The second time, these settlers would be much less likely to let the Konoha ninja go this easy and go back to their ordinary day-to-day lives…

Mana's body blurred and flickered to the shade of another wooden house while she concealed herself in an empty chest from which a large Yordalaran had withdrawn a bunch of meat for sale just seconds earlier. Despite the magician blitzing right up to his back, opening the chest the man had just withdrawn meat from and shutting herself inside it not even four feet away from the man, the Yordalaran failed to notice Mana at all.

This was a lucky break she could use. Her stealth skills were just barely enough to qualify as average for her rank so to be able to successfully conceal herself was a godsend at the moment. At least until the magician could put together a decent plan for further action.

"Mana!" a thought calling out her name resonated in the magician's mind. It was Kiyomi contacting her on the link.

"How did you find me?" Mana wondered while allowing the thought to be relayed to the Yamanaka.

"I didn't. I just kept the link going and noticed you were in range…" Kiyomi replied. Mana forgot just how much the range of this technique increased each time the Yamanaka heiress trained it with her clan peers. "Did you get into trouble or something? I thought you were supposed to contact us."

"I know, I just… I made that plan while under duress and only now realized how difficult it would be to move in a group while being wanted for a beating and expulsion from the settlement." Mana replied. "I'm working on a plan of action right now. It isn't easy while having to hide all the time."

"Never mind that, I've picked up something interesting from a mind I just took over. They're electing a leader today, these Yordalarans. That's why they're so on-edge about foreigners. They're worried that, given our attitudes, we're up to trouble that could mess up their election or that we're here to assassinate their newly elected leader." Kiyomi relayed.

"The spies must have their own man participating. Even if we didn't intend to crash that election, we pretty much have to now…" Mana just barely resisted the temptation to curse, realizing how dire the situation was and how late they were to the party. "If an unfavorable candidate wins, they'll have Yordalar just give their autonomy over to the country that sent the spies bit by bit. These people will be too gullible to notice, the spies likely have already gotten to them by now so the place is ripe for a friendly, democratic surrender."

"Where are you right now?" Kiyomi asked.

"Don't know, a meat chest near some wooden house," Mana replied, knowing full well she would need to be a bit more specific as that pretty much described at least half of the households in the settlement.

A resonating, repeating pulse of cheerful thoughts resonated through the mental link. Mana had been participating in mental communication long enough to identify the mental signal of laughter. She didn't even say anything.

"Sorry, sorry, I just… Imagined you posturing about spies and conspiracies in a chest stinking of meat, all crouched over and stuff…" Kiyomi signaled.

"Yeah… Very mature…" Mana let it out of the link by thinking these thoughts more at the back of her mind, letting them flow ethereally instead of reading these thoughts in her own inner voice out loud. It used to not be that easy in the beginning but by now even Meiko managed to choose which thoughts stayed out of the link quite consistently.

"Alright, alright, find Meiko and Hanshin, I'll find the location where they'll be electing their leader." Kiyomi laid it out in a tone that attempted to mend the peace between the two. "Maybe you had a point about operating separately being easier."

"Okay, if I sense you standing around in one place for a long time, I'll just take it as a sign that you've found the place." Mana agreed to the Yamanaka's plan and peeked out from the meat chest.

The magician's shape flickered and disappeared to anyone not perceptive enough to track her uncanny speed. The top of the box shook and slammed with a dull thud as it was all of sudden held by absolutely no one. A little Yordalaran girl took interest in the peculiar way in which the box was behaving but after a brief moment of returned normalcy, she figured it must have been a raccoon rummaging through the trash or trying to get into the prized safe of treasured, meaty goodness but failed.

Such events were far more casual and happened much more often in the child's day to day life than a foreign ninja having used the chest as a hiding spot and then disappeared to seek her best friend faster than the eye can trace.

Meiko got sent sliding through the ground backward with a chakra-coated buckler in hand. Despite the coating pretty much ensuring the blacksmith's safety, the purely physical pushback from the tremendous force of the Yordalaran guard she was fighting was still formidable. Even if none of these people appeared to be trained in the ninja arts whatsoever, they were still not someone to hold back against.

"I like your weapon…" the blacksmith cheered, observing the long, pole weapon with a heavy blade and a spike at the end. The size of the glaive, as well as the adamant material it was made of, would have made only a physically mighty person a viable user for the legendary weapon of greatly imposing strength.

Meiko's hand reached to her back as if she planned to draw a sword that she was wearing on her back when, in fact, there was none. With a loud poof and a cloud of smoke, a wooden staff of strung together spirals of natural wood appeared in the blacksmith's grip. The wood lit up with intense, red flames that covered it in its entirety before the flames turned to a blood-red chakra coating which took the very shape of the pole weapon used by her opponent.

More and more guards started rushing to their comrade's aid. It did not require a genius to know that soon enough civilians would pick up their weaponry again and try to scare Meiko away from their home. This time they would not give up their search that easily.

Meiko grinned, more opponents was just what she wanted, despite hiding being her primary goal. Even when stealth was her objective, she desperately wanted to test out how her Fire Release coating fighting style she used with her short-sword and arrows translated to such a heavy and unique weapon. She felt like she not only had the required physical strength to wield it but some in reserve. Maybe a more thrust oriented, longer range weapon was just what she needed to complement her style…

"Blood Dragon Crescent Bla…" Meiko yelled out the cool name she had just thought up of while she launched her body at the group of Yordalaran soldiers. Just as her arms tensed up for the pressure required to maintain and execute her rapid barrage of thrusts, all of the opponents froze up and started swinging their weapons around blindly, as if taken over by a fit of madness.

Meiko halted her attack, observing the odd behavior of the group of enemies and their odd state of glee and righteous vengeance that gleamed through the windows to their souls. While initially Meiko looked confused by the change in the behavior enough to drop her newly innovated attack, it only took a handful of moments before the blacksmith realized what had happened.

"I was going to hide, I promise. I just figured it'd be better if I knocked out anyone that saw me!" Meiko called out into the void around her, knowing full-well that Mana was hiding somewhere. Because the blacksmith lacked the magician's chakra sensory gift, she could only speculate and try to read the signs as to where exactly the young woman was.

"Of course you were…" Mana replied while she rushed out of hiding, slowed down the speed of her dash in front of Meiko just enough for the blacksmith to potentially pick up the direction to which the magician was moving and then disappeared again. "How did you get seen anyway? I always thought you were better than me at stealth…"

"That weapon these soldiers wield was so cool I kinda shrieked out a bit…" Meiko chuckled with a blush in her cheeks. "Things were going pretty well before that… In my defense, I didn't expect to see full-on soldiers, why would Yordalar mobilize like that?"

"They're having an election today. Before seeing you, they had no reason to suspect we'd stay around, now, they'll have a very good reason for the entire military of the settlement to be prepared." Mana sighed, realizing how much direr the situation had gotten.

"That's a good thing, means nobody is going to crash that election, right?" Meiko smiled.

"Actually… We're going to interrupt that election." Mana looked at her friend, quickly getting Meiko up to speed to what she knew.

"Damn… Sorry I kind of made things more difficult here." Meiko rubbed the back of her head. Mana knew that look and she needed the self-loathing Meiko the least right now. "And to think I thought I might need to look out for you."

"Why did you think that?" Mana turned at her friend, confused. The two hid behind a wooden home while Mana did her best to try and locate Hanshin's chakra. Given how massive and unique in its feeling it was, it should not have been that difficult.

"Because… I figured you'd still have that principle thing where you'd refuse to use other people's jutsu, so I thought you'd refuse to use Body Flicker and you'd be slowing us down." Meiko rubbed her elbow. Her gauntlet rubbing against the elbow guard made a disgusting metallic sound.

"I still have that principle. I do my best to uphold it." Mana looked back at Meiko.

"But… You've been keeping up with us and Hanshin and we're all using Body Flicker." Meiko raised a confused eyebrow.

"I've learned to utilize my lower body strength to dash around about as fast as someone using Body Flicker. It kind of chips at my physical stamina instead of my chakra, which, granted, I do not have as massive of a supply of, which is why I use it solely for movement, when I need it the most, and not in combat." Mana explained.

"So you've learned martial arts from rabbits to dash around like them?" Meiko's jaw shot open wide.

"Pretty much…" Mana grinned. "You have a way of putting it pretty simple and to the point."

The pair darted around the settlement, moving fast and quiet enough from one safe point to another in a blink of an eye to where even if they were picked up by a curious observer, they'd have only seen black and red blurs instead of the foreigners that were undesired at the moment. Mana's eyes shifted about, observing a busy street of Yordalarans scurrying about, heading for the central square of the settlement a good fifteen minutes on foot from where the two kunoichi were.

"What's the matter?" Meiko whispered. Kiyomi's link was off, whether the Yamanaka had canceled it because she had gotten out of range, because she was saving chakra for what was ahead or because she was in trouble and needed all of her concentration to get through it was still up in the air.

"Hanshin-san… I sensed his chakra around these parts not too long ago." Mana replied. "I can still sense it right now."

"Hmmm… Doesn't seem like he's here. If he was, this place would not be this quiet." Meiko stated the obvious that was already stumping Mana for a handful of seconds. "Maybe he's transformed?"

Of course! Hanshin was arrogant, he was vain and reckless but he was not an idiot, he would not have chosen to slaughter the entire settlement or fall to them and get disgraced by his public removal from the area. The man's pride was his most important thing, that was what made his chakra so unique, how he valued his self-image. He always planned on transforming and giving the gathered, raging mob the slip. Mana would have liked to have seen the switcheroo take place, there was likely much she could have learned from this man even if she did not like him all that much.

"So you can tell which one Hanshin is, right?" Meiko looked at the magician. "I mean, you can tell which one of these civilians has his chakra."

"Yeah, it's that one…" Mana pointed with her finger at a three-meter tall physical amazement with a cheap, fur-mustache imitation and stolen Yordalaran clothes. So he did not transform, he just stole somebody's clothes and… Tried shuffling into the fold. Mana was not sure which was dumber, the fact that this was his idea of disguising himself or that it actually managed to keep him somewhat in the clear.

"Huh… It's so obvious, how did I not spot that guy earlier?" Meiko barely resisted the urge to chuckle again at the obviously hilarious display. "Maybe he can't transform like I was unable to for the longest time? No… He did master that chakra armor technique…"

That was not the case, while Meiko was right to make that conclusion based on her voiced signs, she was wrong to consider Hanshin's chakra armor as some sort of end-all-be-all spectacle of chakra control. It was an amazing feat sure, but not for a lifetime of training…

"Sorry, had to leave the range for a short while." Kiyomi's thoughts resonated on the mental link. "Although I've discovered what they have on you, Mana. The spies slipped the idea out about your accomplishments in the Wind Country."

"Which the Yordalarans left from so they likely don't have the best of working relationships…" Mana mumbled to herself.

"Heh, I bet being a champion of their fighting pits would show you off in the wrong light…" Meiko laughed out.

"Oh, I see you've found Meiko. Welcome back." Kiyomi's thoughts softly splashed around the link.

"We've found Hanshin too. Can you include him from where you are now? His chakra shouldn't be all that different, he barely made an effort to hide." Meiko wondered.

"Took you three long enough…" Hanshin's authoritative voice rung around in each of the heads of the three kunoichi. "Hanshin has managed to infiltrate the enemy ranks as a foreign diplomat."

"If you call putting a bowler hat and a chunk of roadkill on your mouth that…" the mental link pulsed and quaked with Meiko's golden, filled with childish glee thoughts.

"Of course Hanshin would not do something as distasteful as actually transforming into these fat, brutish slobs…" Hanshin shook his head, placing the upper part of his hand onto his head as he regretfully lamented how lowly the three young women thought of him. "Disguising as a diplomat absorbing the local traditions was the only chance for Hanshin to make these savages settle down."

"Are you aware of the election?" Kiyomi asked.

"Indeed, Hanshin is…" the Konoha special jounin tipped his bowler hat to absolutely no one. While the odd, posing antics appeared to draw some attention, his feeble disguise adequately delayed the inevitable recognition of the Konoha ninja, at least for now. "I assume you three will be lurking around the place?"

"Something like that. I have an idea…" Mana smiled.