-Chapter 17 Tenten to One Odds-

After being dismissed from Tsunade's office, Tenten gave her team an hour to prepare for the mission. Both she and Naruto would need this break since neither of them had eaten after their little training exhibition, and Tenten would need to resupply. They would meet up at the front gate once they were ready.

Unsurprisingly, Lee was already there when she arrived. Just as unsurprisingly, he was passing the time by doing thumb pushups. Naruto was also there, though he was talking with Kiba and Ino. Once she joined up with the group she found out that Ino had caught up with Naruto after they had split from the Hokage tower. He told her about the mission and she went to go find Kiba so they could see them off at the gate. Once Kiba saw Tenten coming he immediately broke from the group to greet her.

"So, you are gonna be team leader this time. This will be your first time leading a mission since you joined the Anbu, and the first time that Kiba won't be there with you. I know how much he has been helping you, but now you won't have his experience to fall back on. You gonna be ok out there?" Ino spoke once Kiba released Tenten from his hug. She remembered, quite clearly, how nervous Tenten was during their last mission together. In her mind, this was probably a little unfair of Tsunade to put the girl in this position right now, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

To her surprise, as well as Kiba's, Tenten just smiled. "I sure am. I think I took a page out of Naruto's book because I am actually pretty excited about this. Besides, I'm heading out there with a couple of familiar faces."

Kiba's surprised face quickly broke out into a smile as he wrapped Tenten up in a big hug from behind. "It's like you said. You just needed a little bit more confidence in your already phenomenal abilities. You were already the best weapons user in Konoha, and now you are about 20 or 30 steps above everyone with that blindfolded demonstration."

Tenten smiled warmly at him, but the moment was lost when Lee announced, "Tenten-san, it's time to go."

Tenten nodded and removed herself from Kiba's arms. "Hey Tenten, what's up with Lee? I mean, I understand it's an important mission but-" Before Kiba could finish, Tenten pulled out the picture of Setsuna and showed it to Kiba. "Never mind."

Putting the picture away, she gave Kiba a quick peck on his cheek. "Ok, you hold down the fort for me alright? If I come back and Konoha is in ruins I'm coming straight for you, got it?"

"Don't worry about it. You are leaving the village in good claws." He gave her one more hug before letting her go.

"Keep yourself safe, baka. You still owe Inoria a B class mission, and I don't want to be there when she finds out you can't deliver." Ino smiled a little at that, leaving him with a playful slap to his head and, mirroring Tenten, a kiss on his cheek.

Naruto simply scoffed and stepped off. "Like I'd let anything keep me from keeping my promise to her. She would kill me, and then you would bring me back and kill me." He waved to Kiba before heading to the gates.

Ino looked over to Lee as he prepared to join his team for this mission. "Hey, be careful out there. And watch out for my idiot ok?"

Lee gave her a friendly smile and said, "You don't have to worry about that. From what I heard, Naruto-kun may be the one who watches out for me."

Once Lee joined Naruto and Tenten, they all nodded once to each other before taking off.

Back at the gates, Kiba had turned to Ino. "You have to admit, the Daimyo has quite the looker for a daughter."

Ino simply smiled, and before Kiba could ask what she was smiling about, a small, familiar voice in the back of his head said, "I heard that."

Ino noticed the confused look on his face and smiled evilly. "I had nothing but time on my hands these last couple of months so I was improving some of my mind jutsu. Now if I mind tag multiple people, everyone who is mind tagged can share thoughts. And since whatever you say has to come from your mind, well you can see where I'm going with this. No, I don't mind tag everyone, and no I don't have you mind tagged all the time. But after a similar exchange with Naruto while they were in Tsunade-sama's office, I decided to test you."

Two words left Kiba's mouth as he turned to leave. "You suck."

-8 Hours Later-

After getting quite the decent start on their journey, mainly thanks to Lee and Naruto's seemingly inexhaustible stamina as well as Tenten's increased stamina due to her recent training (though it still nowhere near matched her teammates), Tenten called a halt so they could have a quick rest, allowing them to grab a quick bite to eat, as well as allow Tenten to check their map and make sure that they were heading in the right direction. She would also, quite forcefully, ensure that Lee would not do any excessive training during this break. They still had at the most a day's travel left before they would reach their destination. This would be good though because this would allow them to perform the rescue under the cover of night.

Throughout the break, Tenten had noticed that, while Lee had been very much as jittery as she expected him to be from her utter denial of him doing any sort of hard training while they were on break, Naruto was strangely silent, almost lost in thought. It seemed somewhat strange to see her teammate so introverted, and decided to test the waters a little bit. "Hey Naruto, what's on your mind?"

Not expecting anyone to speak to him, Naruto's head immediately shot up, his face holding quite the surprised look. "Huh?"

Now Tenten knew something was off. "What is it Naruto? You aren't usually this lost in thought, and when you are it's usually something serious. At least to you it is. So what's up?"

Naruto calmed a little bit and then sighed. "Well, everyone knows about how much I wanted to be Hokage. I yelled it out enough times when we were little." Tenten's eyebrows shot up a little during his statement. 'Wanted?' "Well lately, I've been considering it a little bit more seriously and now I am not sure if it's what I really want."

"What do you mean Naruto-kun?" Lee, bored with not being able to do much else joined in the conversation, taking a seat next to Tenten, whose eyebrows were now furrowed slightly in confusion.

"Well back when I was still a Genin- Hell, even before I joined the academy, I had this vision about what the Hokage is, what the Hokage does, based on what I heard. The Hokage is the strongest ninja in the village and protects its people, civilian and ninja alike. Because of the way the people treated me thanks to the Kyubi, I thought that if I became Hokage then whether or not the people liked me, they would have no choice but to accept the fact that I am the one protecting them. I wanted my face on the monument so that everyone would know that it was me, the village pariah, the dead last in his class, that eventually became the leader and protector of this village.

"Now? I see Baa-chan almost every day and have begun to see what she does on a daily basis. Most of the time she doesn't even leave the office. I get bored and frustrated if I don't get a mission within at least a couple weeks. I don't think I could handle just sitting there in the office, doing paperwork, and sending out other ninjas to do missions that I would rather do myself. Besides, I already have the recognition of most of the villagers and ninjas thanks to the sound army, Thanks in part to me, we are great allies with Gaara and the Hidden Sand, most of my exploits up until now have given me the support of quite a few influential people, and who knows how well known my name will be once we retrieve the Daimyo's daughter. I don't need recognition anymore, and I don't want to be sitting on my ass all day, bored out of my mind, while the rest of you get to go out on missions."

Tenten's face quickly changed from confusion to understanding, and she voiced this understanding. "So you liked the idea of being Hokage because of what it meant, but now that you are making a name for yourself on your own, without needing to be Hokage, you are starting to wonder if it will be worth it at all."

"That sounds about right."

"So what would happen if Tsunade-sama was to retire right now, and she named you to be the Rokudaime? Would you accept, or ask her to find someone else?"

He had to think about that one for a good minute before answering. "At this point, if there is someone in the village worthy of being Hokage then I would be all for letting them take it. But would that be right? I mean, doesn't that sound a little selfish of me?"

Tenten wasn't entirely sure how to answer that. Fortunately, she didn't have to. "Naruto-kun." Both of the Anbu members turned to look at the green clad ninja, who had paused for a moment to consider his next words. "If someone were to find a way to fix my chakra coils, allowing me to perform ninjutsu and genjutsu, I think I would still only use taijutsu and weapons. Even if they told me that it would help me more to diversify myself, I would still not use them. I think I would even refuse the procedure entirely. I prefer using only my taijutsu because that is what I want to do. You say that you think it is selfish of you to not want to be Hokage even if you are the most qualified to do so, but I do not think so. It is your life, so it is your choice how you want to live it. Be Hokage, be Anbu, be a Jounin instructor, it doesn't matter what you want to be, so long as it is what you want to do."

While Naruto let this tumble around in his head for a minute, Tenten turned to her original teammate with a look of wonder. It wasn't every day that Lee would be the one to provide some enlightening advice, and even less often that he would find a way to use his own disability to help inspire others this way. Apparently though, it worked perfectly because Naruto smiled after a minute of thinking. "You're right. I enjoy missions, I enjoy training, and I already take an active role in protecting the village as I do now." Standing up he slapped his face a couple of times and then faced his friends. 'Thanks guys. I really needed that."

Lee and Tenten stood as well, smiling and nodding their heads at him, Tenten speaking up after nodding. "Good, because no matter how much you needed it I wasn't gonna let Lee give you that kick in the ass that you wanted from Kiba."

Naruto laughed a little at that. Lee looked confused, and Tenten leaned over and said, "Inside joke." After Lee nodded his understanding, Tenten finished the last bite of her ration bar, and then said, "Ok, let's get moving. We still have a lot of ground to cover, but if we continue at the pace we were moving and limit the amount of breaks we take, we should get there with more than enough time to rest up before nightfall."

"Hai!" Lee and Naruto spoke in unison, and after a quick area clean up, they were off.

"Naruto-kun, Tenten-san," Lee spoke to both of his partners in mid leap as they were moving through the trees. Tenten was right. At the pace they were moving it would be about a few hours before sunset before they would reach the building, and they were almost 30 minutes away from there now. Both of them turned to him to see what was on his mind. "I've been wanting to ask this for a while now. Just how did you guys beat the sound army? I haven't heard any details about it yet and to be honest, it's been on my mind since I found out about it."

Naruto nodded his head and turned to the front so he could watch where he was going while he explained. "Well, think of it this way. If you walk up to someone and hit them as hard as you can when they aren't even expecting to fight anyone at that point in time, they are going to be a little disoriented. Then you just keep on hitting them, not even giving them a chance to recover or fight back. That's basically what we did. We snuck into the base unnoticed and once we were inside we just hit them as hard as we could and kept on hitting. Pretty disorienting when you are suddenly invaded by hundreds of Kage Bunshin from within your own base."

"I see. But it was just the four of you-"

"Five of us." Tenten corrected him immediately.

"Five of-? Oh, Akamaru, right? Ok, well using your analogy, Naruto-kun, that same fight was more like someone like Ino or her sister getting into a taijutsu match with Tsunade-sama or Gai-sensei. No matter how hard you hit them, they will be able to weather your blows until you wear yourself out."

"True. And towards the end of the fight that's what happened." Tenten picked up the explanation at that point. "Kiba, Ino, and I were running low on chakra and there were still a decent number of ninjas left to kill, most of them elites. Naruto was still able to go on, so he told Kiba to cut a path out of the base for him, me, and Ino to escape."At this Lee's head snapped over to Naruto, wondering if he had let the adrenaline get to his head during that fight. "I know, we all thought the same thing. But he persisted, saying something about needing us to be as far away as we can for what he was about to do. Ino told Kiba to do it and we didn't question it after that. When we came back the next day, after we were sure the battle was over, and it looked like something out of a horror movie. Body parts were everywhere, blood coated the ground, and there was Naruto, sleeping under a tree." After a couple of seconds Tenten giggled a little bit, causing Lee to look over at her confused, one of his ridiculously proportioned eyebrows raised above the other. "Before we left Konoha, Naruto promised us that we were all going to come back alive, even if he had to carry us all back on his back. He was so out of it after that battle that Kiba had to carry him back. Needless to say, Kiba didn't appreciate that much."

Lee nodded with a laugh of his own. Then he grew serious for a moment and turned back to Naruto. "How did you do it? How could you have possibly killed the rest of them on your own?"

Interestingly enough from Tenten's perspective, Naruto didn't even have to think about his next words. Apparently, after his confession to Kiba and her, it had started to come naturally to him. "The Kyubi. The Yondaime didn't kill it. He sealed it inside of someone. Me."

Lee nearly missed his next step, but recovered enough to remember that they were still moving. His face had taken on a look of complete shock but he didn't slow down or change his pace. He then looked over to his female teammate after remaining silent for a few minutes. "You know as well?"

Tenten nodded her head once. "While everyone who was old enough to understand what the Kyubi was when he attacked knows this, of the younger generations, only me, you, Kiba, Ino, Sakura, and Sasuke know."

Lee then looked forward for what must have been an eternity for Naruto, while Tenten looked at Lee, worried about what his reaction would be. "I am glad that you have entrusted me with this secret my rival, but you still have not answered my question."

Tenten let out quite possibly the biggest sigh of relief she had even let out, while Naruto couldn't help but smile at his friend. "Well, the furball and I have made a bit of a compromise. As long as he doesn't try to force his way through the seal, occasionally I will allow him to take control of our body, letting him kill off whoever he wants in the immediate area. The issue with that is he doesn't discriminate between friend and foe so I have to make sure it is just me and whoever it is I want to kill before I release him."

Tenten nodded her head. He had yet to bestow this piece of knowledge upon her and Kiba. Judging by Ino's actions, she was sure that she knew already, but she would ask anyway.

Lee would nod as well. "An interesting little contract you have forged with the demon. One that unfortunately will not do us much good with the task we will need to accomplish."

"True." Tenten spoke up next. "Lee, listen carefully. There is a law that was put into place by the Sandaime that strictly prohibits anyone who knows about the Kyubi from telling anyone who doesn't. Naruto is the only exception due to the fact that he is its container"

"Hai! I understand completely, Tenten-san. I promise that until Naruto-kun does so, I will not speak of the Kyubi to anyone who doesn't know."

"Good, thank you Lee." Tenten made sure to cut Lee off before he went off on another one of his Gai-sensei inspired tangents.

"Ok guys, time to get back to business. There's the building." Naruto's voice caught the attention of the two other ninja's and they looked forward, and sure enough there was the building that Setsuna was supposed to be in, along with her kidnappers.

A quick hand sign by Tenten and all three of them immediately dropped from the trees, the bushes easily concealing them from sight. Tenten unsealed the building plans from one of her storage scrolls and laid them out for all of them to see.

"Ok, first thing we need to know about this building is that what we see now is just the top floor of the building. It continues underground for another three floors. The first two basement floors look like they were used as some sort of office space, while the last floor is mostly empty. If I had to guess, I would say they are keeping Setsuna on the bottom floor. If they keep her in the center of the room, it will make it that much harder to get to her without being seen. On the east and west sides of the building there are elevators, which may or may not work anymore depending upon how old this place is and if it was renovated or repaired over time, and staircases that run all the way down to the bottom floor. As you can imagine, there are no windows on any of the basement floors so those are our only options for getting down there. As for getting in to the building, as you can plainly see none of the doors or windows on the top floor have been repaired, probably to dissuade passersby from getting suspicious of any activity going on in the building. Getting in will be easy, getting to the girl will be difficult, getting out with her will be trouble, and doing all of this will trying not to alert anyone will be next to impossible."

Lee periodically nodded his head at appropriate points in the explanation, while Naruto was listening to her with a look of wonder. She had definitely gotten over her previous nervousness, no question about it. Her assessment of the enemy base of operations was almost as impressive as one of Ino's. Now all she needed to do was add in a little bit of humor here and there and she would be perfect. "Ok, then give me a little time. I can send in a few clones to scout ahead and see if we can find out how many of them there are, and if there are any holes in their guard."

Tenten nodded her head. "OK, good. We still have plenty of time before it gets dark so we will go ahead and sleep until then. Can you receive updates from your clones while you sleep?"

His face took on a bit of an intuitive look on it as he thought about her question. "Not sure. Never tried that before. Hmm, I suppose I could leave another clone here while the others scout around. I can dispel him when we wake up and he can also keep an eye out in case someone comes."

"Sounds good to me. Let's get some rest. We might have a long night ahead of us." After Naruto created the required clones, they each found a comfortable spot to curl up and went to sleep.

6 hours later, Tenten's silent alarm woke her up, and with a few quick taps her teammates were up as well. The clone Naruto had put on watch duty dispelled itself and after a few moments, he began his report.

Top floor's empty. Boat load of traps though. Even if someone got suspicious, unless they were a ninja I doubt they wouldn't have survived. My clones managed to disarm them before they moved on. Good thing too, since even if they didn't kill us, the noise would have alerted the ninjas. The staircase on the west side is blocked off, and I'm pretty sure that they did that recently since none of the wood looks as old as the building. Same thing for the east side staircase going down and it zigzags all the way down. There is a guard at each staircase, and it is pretty well lit down there. No power lines though, so they must have gotten the power going again.

"The first and second basement floors are where the ninjas are mustered. Lots of them too. Obviously, the crisscrossing staircases were intentional, because there is no way we are using the stairs to get down there. Two of my clones got into the elevator shafts. The elevators are at the bottom floor, and my clones were gracious enough to disengage the locks on the doors. I've had to deal with elevators before, and I learned a little bit about them after about 5 times. No surveillance cameras. Three guards are on the bottom floor. Like you said, bottom floor is empty, save for a chair. Take a guess at who is occupying that chair. The guards change shifts every 2 hours. We have maybe half an hour before the next shift change."

Tenten allowed herself to remain silent after Naruto finished his speech, contemplating how they could get in and out with the girl. 'Wish Ino were here. She makes this look so easy.' Unbidden, memories of their mission to the Sound Army base came back, as well as Naruto's decision to throw stealth out the window. And a thought crossed her head. "I think I have an idea. It's not the sanest plan I have ever thought of, but with you two here it just might work. "

After hearing the plan, Lee's eyes were wide with something akin to wonder, while Naruto started to stifle his laughter. "It's official. You have definitely been hanging around me way too much. There's no way in hell that pre-Anbu you would ever even consider a plan like this."

"Well, pre-Anbu me never really thought you could pull something like this off, but now that I have firsthand experience with you and impossible situations, I am more than willing to entertain and idea as ridiculous as this."

Lee had started to giggle a little bit at this, obviously entertained by the two ninjas' antics. "Tenten-san, is it always like this with you and the rest of your team?"

"Pretty much, and you can thank this idiot for it." For about half a second, Naruto attempted to feign looking hurt at her statement, but failed miserable and just scoffed. "Ok, we make our move in 45 minutes. Last chance for a bathroom break. Oh, and Lee, because of the sensitivity of this I would prefer that you take your weights off now."

To say that Lee looked overjoyed at this would be about the same as saying Lee had unique eyebrows. It was so obvious that it practically went without saying.

After their prescribed wait time had ended, Lee, Naruto, and Tenten headed into the top floor of the building. From there, they broke off. Tenten, along with two of Naruto's clones, headed to the elevator shaft, Naruto transformed into a bug so he could head down the boarded off stairway, and Lee headed to the open one.

As Naruto had said, the door of the elevator slid open easily, though Naruto's first clone opened it very slowly to avoid any unnecessary noise, and only opened it enough for him, the other clone, and Tenten to pass through one at a time.

Once In the shaft it was a simple walk down the wall to the elevator car, then in through the emergency hatch on the roof of the car. As soon as all three were inside Tenten activated her communicator and said, "Tenten, in position."

From the other end of the line, Lee spoke just as silently as she did. "Same here. Naruto has two minutes to get into position before we start."

Tenten nodded her head. Since he was transformed, Naruto wouldn't be able to use his communicator right now, which was why she had brought an extra clone with her. As soon as the time came, the clone would dispel, and Naruto would know it was time to start the plan.

One minute and thirty seconds later, she was starting to fidget with her scrolls a little too much, but not in fear. In anticipation. She was ready, she knew it. Taking a deep breath she calmed herself a little bit, not wanting to get too excited. Fifteen seconds later, the other clone took his position at the door, cracking it slightly so he could get a good grip in the doors, ready to throw them open.

Tenten crouched down and began to count down. "Go. Yon. San. Ni. Ichi." Starting with the second clone's sudden disappearance a few things happened at once.

The first clone threw open the door and bent down low, allowing Tenten to leap over him into the room.

Lee, with his now fully constructed staff, leaped into the first basement floor from the open staircase leading to the top floor, taking out the guard as he did.

From the other end of the same floor, a cockroach suddenly transformed into a blonde haired, blue eyed, whisker faced ninja, who proceeded to send the guard all the way to the other end of the room courtesy of a Rasengan.

The horde on ninja's on the first basement floor, too surprised by the sudden attack to really do anything for the first few seconds, started to grab whatever weapons were closest to them in order to begin the counterattack.

The horde on the second basement floor, hearing the commotion, stared moving immediately, most of them going to see what the problem was, while the rest of the ninja's, numbering 25 heading down the stairs to the bottom floor, in case this was a ninja attack and the commotions was just a distraction.

The guards on the bottom floor did nothing. They had just enough time to recognize that the ninja coming in through the elevator was not one of their group before all three of them crumpled to the ground thanks to a kunai, a shuriken, and a senbon needle, each to the head of each ninja.

Once they were dealt with Tenten hurried over to the occupied chair in the middle of the room. The girl was dressed rather conservatively, in a simple kimono that most commoners wore. Tenten assumed that she was dressed this way by her kidnappers to keep her from being automatically identified while they were transporting her. Currently she was staring down at the recently deceased ninja to her right, a look of disgust on her face. "Serve's you right." Looking to her rescuer she calmed slightly. "You are a Konoha ninja, right?"

Tenten nodded her head. "My name is Tenten. I have been sent here by the Hokage at the personal request of your father to rescue you, Setsuna."

Setsuna nodded as Tenten used a kunai to cut the ropes binding her to the chair. Flexing her now free limbs, as well as rubbing her now bruised wrists, she started to stand and speak, but froze all of the sudden. Tenten noticed that she was starring past her and smiled. "Don't worry. I was expecting company about now anyway." Tenten turned to face the group of 25 ninjas that had come down to prevent her rescue. Frowning, Tenten sighed. "I was expecting more of you."

One of them chuckled lightly. "We will be more than enough to kill you." At that they all moved to surround the two females, each one of them taking out weapons.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. After all, as close as Setsuna is to me right now, you wouldn't want to risk accidentally taking out your hostage, would you?" 'Definitely need to talk to Ino. That was way harder than I thought it would be.' It was a bluff, and it definitely was one she hoped they wouldn't call her out on. Fortunately, they seemed to buy it and didn't look that eager to rush things just yet.

"What will you do? You can't escape with her. And even with your little surprise attack I doubt whoever is up there will survive, much less be in any shape to help you."

Tenten wasn't really listening to him. She was currently counting the number of lights in the room, as well as making sure she could hit them all fast enough. "Setsuna, when I tell you to, I want you to drop to the ground as fast as you can and stay there. Don't move, don't speak, and try to keep your breathing as quiet as you can. Understood?" After a minute of no answer, Tenten reached back to grasp the young woman's hand. "Don't worry; well make it out of here. I don't plan on letting you out of my sight until you are in your father's arms." Her reassurance worked, and she received a small, but determined, "Hai," from Setsuna.

After one last look around, as ensuring she had the proper number of kunai ready she screamed, "NOW!" Setsuna dropped and 7 Kunai flew into the air. Once second later the lights were out. The kidnappers, not sure what else to do, started to throw weapons at where Tenten was. Some collided with other weapons and clattered on the ground. Others were not so luck and flew across the room striking down the ninjas in their path. Once Tenten was sure that there were no more weapons being thrown she stood up and attempted to reassess her situation. Throughout all of the clatter and screaming and yelling for them to stop throwing, she could tell that at least 5 of the 23 that had shown up were dead, with just as many probably injured. Smiling slightly, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and opened her ears.

Almost a full minute later, "Oi, is she de-" His question would never finish exiting his mouth as he suddenly went silent, save for the small thump of his body hitting the ground.

"Oi! What hap-" And just like that, two of them were done. Some of the ninjas learned from the first two's mistakes and immediately went silent. The rest apparently figured there was some kind of demon at work here and immediately started to run away. One by one they all fell. By the end of that round, Tenten estimated that there were probably about 9 healthy ninjas left. A small cough later, and that number dropped to eight.

Three of the eight ninjas all decided to move at once, one directly behind her and one to her right jumping towards her, while one in front of her and off to her left threw four kunai. Tenten easily dodged the only one that had a chance at hitting her, and was rewarded with the sound of two of them hitting each of the other ninjas that were moving. One second later, and the attacker was downed as well. 5.

It got silent for a while after that and Tenten was beginning to worry that maybe her count was off. Then she got an idea. Taking out a kunai she let it drop to the ground. The clatter it caused caught the attention of four of the other ninjas, and they immediately jumped towards her general direction. The only one that would have actually caught her was dead before he even hit the ground again. The next two clashed clumsily into each other and were greeted with two senbon needles each. The fourth? He stumbled into Tenten's arm's reach and had just enough time to realize that he was screwed before the dull sound of metal on bone entered his ears. Then he dropped like a rock.

The last ninja left, had been getting more and more nervous as time went on, and then came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea. He began signing, thinking as long as he didn't move and didn't announce his jutsu, he could take her out from where he stood. Yes, he would probably take out the hostage as well, but he didn't care. What he didn't take into account was the fact that his nervousness caused him to overdo things a bit. Like cause his hands to clap together when he was doing his hand signs. As such, his hands would freeze in the middle of the ox sign, and he too would fall to the floor, courtesy of a kunai between the eyes.

After she was sure that was everyone she relaxed and brought Setsuna to her feet. "Naruto, you still there?" From the corner of the room, where the elevator she came in from lay, Naruto's voice came. "Still here Tenten. Phase one complete?"

"Yep. Now on to phase two."

While Tenten was dealing with the ninja's downstairs, Naruto and Lee were dealing with their own problems upstairs. With the inclusion of most of the ninja's from the second basement floor, as well as Naruto's clones, the first basement floor was starting to get a little crowded. However, Lee and Naruto managed to keep the fight on this floor, as planned.

Also as per their plan, they were seriously restriction the amount of jutsu and/or moves that they used. One wrong step and the building could very well collapse. This somewhat evened up the battlefield, but not enough for Naruto and Lee to feel overwhelmed by their opposition.

In fact, Naruto was just getting into his groove when his communicator beeped. "Tenten. How's the extraction going?"

The voice on the other end of the line almost caused him to miss a block from a ninja in front of him. "Nar- cough, cough. Naru….to. Lee…. Plan…. Is scrapped. Two…..must escape….now."

"WHAT? What about Setsuna?"

"Too…..many. Couldn't get….her out. Must get out…..now."

Naruto grit his teeth. He didn't want to leave her behind. But at this point he could only think of one way to get to her through this mass of humanity, and that would probably not be good for the building. "Lee. You get that?"

"Hai. I don't think we can make it down there and back up with both Tenten and the girl. We may have to think of another plan. Retreat for now?"

"I don't like it anymore than you do, but I don't think we have a choice. Head for the stairs." Even as he was talking, Naruto started fighting his way to the stairs closest to him, which just happened to be the boarded off one. Lee, now not hefting his staff, was at the stairs and out of the building in a blink of an eyes, while Naruto, after breaking through the barricade and leave a few clones behind to keep his pursuers busy was right behind them. Both looked back at the building one last time before speeding off into the woods.

The ninja's were about to give chase, having finally made it to the top floor of the building, but were stopped by a commanding voice. "Let them go! I just checked the bottom floor. All of the men we sent are dead, but we still have the girl and one of their teammates is here as well, gravely injured. It seems their little distraction plan failed. Now we have the daimyo's daughter and a Konoha ninja." They all smiled at that. Two bargaining chips meant more ransom money. Content, the ninjas re-entered the building to plan their next ransom letter.

Meanwhile, well out of view of the building Lee and Naruto had finally stopped, and Naruto turned to his left with a smile on his face. "Mission…."

"….complete." Tenten's voice came from behind the tree Naruto had turned to, and Tenten herself, followed by Setsuna, walked into view.

-End-

Assuming you haven't figured it out already, all will be explained in the next chapter. I have it in my head, just need to put in on paper and then type it out.

Sorry if this seems to be a little rushed but I know me. And if I didn't get this out now I never would have. Or at the very least it would have taken me a lot longer.

All I got right now. R&R&have a nice day.