Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Games of Body and Soul

The Great Yordalaran Bingo

Yordalar looked... Underwhelming more than anything else. Just a bunch of scattered homes and necessities, a featureless mass of straw, wood, fur and anything else that could have just been taken, placed under one's armpit and carried off to another place. Knowing her own upbringing, Mana felt like it should have seemed fascinating and familiar on a deeper level than she could comprehend. Her very genetics were supposed to call out to this place but... There was nothing.

"You are no locals." A man of thick proportions and black, downside crescent mustache declared with a bland face. At the moment of him uttering these words, it was unclear if he wanted to hug the group or try to kill them. "Got some food cooking, please, come over and rest."

"That's surprising curiosity for total strangers." Kiyomi signaled through the mental link.

"We are wearing Konoha headbands, they may want to get on our good side what with our village being Fire Lord's pride, tool, and blade," Mana replied.

"I could use some food..." Meiko stated something that surprised absolutely no one.

"We could all use a little stop." Hanshin breathed in and out with some depth to the degree to which his chest moved.

The entire family attended this early lunch. Yordalar men appeared to dress not too differently from the women, fancy, long coats that looked more like sophisticated bathrobes than what you'd dress up with for a momentous occasion which these people very much treated this as.

"Aww, tight! They're cooking meat and shrooms underground!" Meiko yelled out loudly, instead of using the mental link, even though the thought was worded to be more of a general observation than something meant to address the family with.

"It's an ancient way of cooking, one that even our own ancestors used before the time of villages and more sizeable establishments. It was said to make food extremely succulent although I have not had the chance to compare the two methods." Mana explained, she was not quite sure which side of her knew this – the historian or the self-declared cooking aficionado.

"Look at you acting like you know the first thing about cooking." Kiyomi squinted at the magician.

"Nah, Mana used to be really bad at it but she's gotten better." Meiko smiled.

"I've had some training shortly before ruining Kiyomi's wedding..." Mana chuckled.

"Those Uchiha... They didn't know anything about the foreign spies in Yordalar. It appears they were just looking to be a pain in Konoha's ass." Hanshin interrupted the banter. Even if the magician could see as well as feel the dismay and disappointment from Kiyomi and Meiko's side, she could sort of understand it. The three of them were friends that shared tons of common history. Hanshin was familiar with or cared about just about none of it.

"It's not like we had plenty of chances interrogating them." Mana shrugged, supporting her superior's decision to talk business while politely participating the early noon festivities of the family of Yordalar locals. Judging from pillars of smoke in the distance it was not an alien concept in Yordalar, in fact, it may just have been a tradition to eat this way at this hour.

"Not like they gave us any. Someone like those guys would have been too much hassle to interrogate." Kiyomi pointed out.

"So what do we do now? Our only questionable lead got busted up and turned out to be pointless..." Meiko dug into a piece of poultry pulled out from underground by the family patriarch and handed down to his family as well as the quartet of ninja, as if they were his own family.

Mana turned at the family with a hint of worry in her eyes. These six didn't strike the magician as the overly interested type in the confidential information that they were discussing while completely ignoring the mental link just for the sake of not looking weird and impolite. The family was engaged in their own conversations, in fact, there was not a single topic being discussed but it appeared like every single member ranging from the six-year-old boy had something to share with the family.