A/N: Ooh! I wrote this whole story in one sitting, in the space of eight hours. I know it's not the longest, prettiest thing you've ever seen, but too be honest I'm quite proud of myself. I enjoyed writing this, and I think I did a very good job. Although, it's still only 3am... 0.0

Anyway, please, enjoy the story. But be warned, it's gonna get pretty blunt, and pretty freaky later on.

And the idea of the ANBU teams being packs is totally Dark Kitten's Dream idea – I stole it from her most amazing story called Beasts. You should go read it. It's so shiny!

Top Secret: ANBU Mission Logs

Chapter One

After the mission, under the cover of dark, we silently slipped into Konoha, sneaking past the boarder patrol and to the building for returning chunin, jounin and ANBU. We entered through the back, where no one would see us. This was how it always was. So when we left, through the front door, no one would no the ANBU had even left, let alone who they were.

We entered the shower room, stripping out of our uniforms, hanging up our masks and weapons as we stepped into the hot, steaming water. It felt so good to have all that caked mud, filth, sweat and blood swirling down the drains, no longer on my body. When I first joined ANBU, being a girl and all, I had felt odd about showering together. Now it was normal. It wasn't sexual. It was comforting. Like a pack of wolves licking each others wounds clean, I felt hands help me rinse the caked blood out of my hair. It wasn't my blood. No, it was a little girls. She'd had a bomb strapped to her chest, and I'd had to slit her throat before she could kill me, and my family. She couldn't have been older than nine.

I sighed, feeling the thick liquid roll down my shoulders and onto the tiles. I turned around and hugged Kakashi, breathing in the smell of flesh. Many would find this awkward, but in our line of work, we were too far gone to care about such trivialities. It was all about survival, and I needed a hug. I needed to feel safe, I needed to feel someone tell me that it was okay. That what I did was okay.

That killing that little girl didn't make me a monster.

Kakashi knew, they all knew. We all knew. We all understood how this was. Life like this was totally different from the rest of the world. We were animals, fighting to protect the territory. That was all. We were tools.

But above all, we were not people. Being polite, being modest, being ethical, none of that mattered.

In the end, all that mattered was that the pack was safe.

And today, the pack came home safe. I had done good.

Once all the blood was washed away, and everyone was clean, all the sins washed down the drain, the water was turned off. We helped each other dry off, reveling in the touch of each other, breathing in the smell of skin and soap and simply luxuriating in the fact that we were all here, all together, all alive.

After that, though, we separated. We put on our clothes. Kakashi and Genma their jounin vests, me and Iruka in our chunin uniform.

We became people, on the outside. We put on our disguises and entered into the lives that were no longer ours, no longer who we are. Just who we pretended to be.

We picked up the paperwork for the mission reports, groaning and complaining and joking together about it, then planned to meet at the bar at 9. I kissed each of them on the cheek before we left, smiling and waving goodbye.

I was going to go home, and I was going to make muffins. Nothing like a two weeks on a horrific, painful mission to make you crave muffins.