Naruto One Man Team by Ackdam

Chapter 30: The Hunt is On

Those that could make it were now assembled in front of the tower. She had a feeling that most came more because of the fact that it was the Uchiha than the fact that he was an escaped prisoner. Even so she was busy, along with some others, dividing those gathered into groups for retrieval. The only problem was that they were quickly running out of long distance trackers and there were a lot of ninja left to allocate. They had the choice of making larger groups or send people out blind.

It would have been easier I the kid's scent wasn't all over the village. She quickly began to wonder if there was a place the little bastard didn't go when he wasn't in his cell. Other than that there were no fresh scents to follow past a certain point outside the walls. Either whoever got him managed to teleport away or they put him in something. Following their scents was no good either. It seemed that whoever came for him planned far ahead as their scent was all over the place, covering a large area around the village. In short they could have gone in any direction. Their only hope was to go outward until the scent disappeared, then follow the border of the scent until they crossed its path again.

Even if they crossed the trail and managed to pick up the scent, it would be a matter of how far they may have gotten, and if the squad would be able to catch them before they crossed a border. If they hit a border it would soon become and international issue unless they went through legal methods to get permission to cross over. The whole thing was giving her a headache, not to mention all the paperwork it was causing. She could see the face of the old man laughing at her inside her head.

She sent another of the ever growing squads off to the west with a dismissive wave of her hand. As she looked towards the next group coming towards her she grimaced. 'Sending a bunch of rookies after ninja that were able to take out jōnin and chūnin. This just gets better and better. Safety in numbers I guess.' She waved them over and the group behind them, catching a few people off guard.

"Alright brats. Uchiha Sasuke was broken out and we're going to find him and bring him back. Now I'm putting you all together since we don't know how many of what rank ninja are with him. You get Kiba as your tracker since you should be at least a little familiar with him. Any preference in direction?" She looked down at the map and waited for someone to speak up.

"...I say North." Shikamaru announced as he looked at the current troop movements.

"Any particular reason?" Tsunade knew that a Nara wouldn't make such a decision lightly.

"I agree with him." Naruto said from the side with Haku nodding beside him.

"I'm still waiting for a reason."

"Sasuke was marked by Orochimaru, who is the Otokage. It would stand to reason that he would be the most likely to try to capture the Uchiha. As such they would be heading towards Oto."

"Shit..." Tsunade looked up from her map just in time to see the last of her jōnin disappearing over the rooftops. All that was left were assorted chūnin and genin. "Double shit...Ok I guess you're all that's left. A bunch of clan brats and a wise ass with a former Oto kunoichi can't be all that bad I suppose." She stared between them and the map for a moment, biting her nails in frustration. For all she knew they could be up against elite jōnin. "...Alright fine. Who's going to take lead?"

The three chūnin looked at each other. "Shikamaru." Naruto and Haku announced, to which the Nara muttered "Troublesome."

"Alright, Nara you're in charge. Do as you see fit. You have thirty minutes to prepare then you head North. Meet your team outside the gates and if someone doesn't show up, leave them behind. Time is of the essence here."

A chorus of "Hai" came just before the group of ninja shot off to gear up. With only a half hour they had to rush.

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