Author's Note: Well school took a chunk out of my writing time, but I should have a more regular updating schedule now that it's the summer. Here's the next chapter this time in third-person POV

Disclaimer: Do not own


Kagami awoke next to his loving wife and gave her a kiss good morning. She smiled that bright smile at him that made him fall in love with her in the first place before she went to freshen up and prepare breakfast for the whole family.

He was content with his life, he married the woman he loved with all his heart and she bore him three wonderful children even if one of them was gone before his time. He lost a lot of friends during the war, but the ones that survived became closer than ever and he couldn't wish for anything more, there was one comrade that became estranged after Hiruzen was elected as the Sandaime, he had hoped to recover their friendship, but Danzo became someone who he could no longer recognize as the years passed.

It was while he was mock scolding little Shisui for teasing his little sister by making her face become a mess by messing with her food when there was a knock on the door. Both he and his wife walked toward it to find out that she was assigned a simple A-rank mission to eliminate a missing-nin who was gathering ninja that was a bit too close to Fire territory for comfort.

It was a straight-forward mission and he trusted his wife's abilities and glancing at her teammates, he had no doubts this mission would be a success: a young man who he personally passed into the hunter-nin corps and the one of the sannin, Orochimaru.

Looking at Orochimaru though, he felt a chill up his spine, he did not trust Hiruzen's star pupil, something about him just seemed off. He was also the second-in-command of Root before it disbanded when it was discovered the horrors Danzo used to train his men with and the number of unsanctioned missions they undertook. He knew Orochimaru condoned all of those actions since he was co-commander and he would not trust anyone that would treat other humans like that. However, the snake was a fellow leaf-nin and no matter his personal grievances they were comrades so everything should be fine.

His little daughter wandered to the door to see what the commotion was all about and he reassured her that there was nothing special going on, mommy was just going on a simple mission. Nodding with the trust that only a child could have, she doddled back to the table to finish her meal.

After a couple of days, his daughter pestered him about her mother again as she was wont to do whenever her mother went on a longish mission as everyone in the household missed her cooking. For all his shinobi talent and intelligence, the one thing he could not do is cook, to his great embarrassment and every time his children asked when they could eat good food again he always felt flustered and shamed. He consoled Shiina by reassuring her that her mom would be fine she had Orochimaru with her just to eliminate some nameless missing-nin and a bunch of grunts. There was a flash of something in her eyes that if he wasn't a shinobi he would've missed, was that dread? Why would something like that flash across her eyes? Before he could question her, she just gave him a distracted smile and walked away.

"She probably remembered she had a play-date or something," he thought to himself, he was just being overly paranoid as he went back to reading his scroll.


The dinner table was as lively as it was normally, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to happen tonight. As he was grabbing a cup for tea earlier, the cup's handle suddenly separated and the whole cup fell to the floor and shattered.

Kagami didn't really believe in superstitions, but every time his cup shattered, something unfortunate occurred. The first time, he received news that his eldest son died on a mission and the only thing they could recover was his headband as his team had to destroy his body since they were deep in enemy territory, the second time was the infamous Kyuubi attack, he really hoped that this third time did not signal anything amiss.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

"No," he thought to himself, his wife was due back from her mission at around this time and she would not be knocking. He pasted a smile on his face to his children, it would not do to worry them, perhaps he was overthinking things, maybe she just was tired and didn't want to get her keys out. Yes, that had to be it, he's experienced that type of fatigue after a mission before, that teacup was a decade old it was going to break eventually.

Taking a deep breath and rebuking himself for his pessimistic thoughts, he walked toward the door and opened it with a smile to welcome his wife back home,

"Hey honey, too tired..to-," his words died as he saw it was not his wife at the door but a nondescript chunin, the ones that usually delivered messages, and the somber look on the teenager's face was sending alarm bells ringing through his head. His mind replayed the exact scene years ago, when he found out his son was no longer of this earth.

"Uchiha-sama, I regret to inform you that Hikari Uchiha died while completing her mission." The teenager looked up and saw the jounin commander frozen in place as if not believing the information. He hated these type of messages, he's seen this reaction so many times before and it made things so awkward. Knowing that the man is still in shock, he said his goodbyes before going on to inform the hunter-nin's family of his demise also, sighing he went on his way.

When the dust settled after the chunin left, Kagami managed to subconsciously close the door and head back to the table. The movements were rigid and mechanical as his brain was not there too busy trying to wrap around the fact that the light of his life was no longer here with him. His daughter's voice brought him back to reality,

"Who was that daddy? Kaa-san is coming back home tonight from her mission right, is her mission longer than expected?" the girly voice so full of innocence rang out. Closing his eyes, not being able to hold back his tears anymore, he choked out the news, shattering his children's up until now innocent lives.

He could not focus on dinner anymore and after eating went directly into his room too stricken with grief to even say goodnight to his children. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, as the autopsy will be tomorrow and there was no way he was going to miss it, he was going to find out how the mission completely screwed up and if Orochimaru didn't avenge his squad's murderers he himself would.


Leaving early the next day, he went to the autopsy room where it was standard practice to find out cause of death and compare it to the mission report if the body was able to be recovered. Since the mission was in Fire territory with no risk of secrets being discovered, bodies were able to be recovered.

Mentally preparing himself to see the corpse of his wife he entered the room where the bodies lay. There were two corpses, the young hunter-nin who had a deep stab wound in his neck and looking at the angle and shape seemed to be caused by a kunai stabbed from behind his right shoulder. Looking at the mission report submitted by Orochimaru apparently he got ambushed from behind and got killed before they could react in the camp.

"That is weird, I remember passing him into hunter-nin for his excellent sensing abilities only ANBU commanders could escape his detection and there was no enemy of that level in our intelligence." Kagami thought and there was no mention of an enemy of that level in the report either.

Walking over to the other corpse he kept his emotions in check and tried not to think about how different she looked now, how full of life she was just the last time he saw her was. Shaking those thoughts out he looked at the fatal injury. A clean, very clean and deep slash with a katana from her left shoulder to her right hip.

Kagami narrowed his eyes, the cut was too clean to be done with a run of the mill weapon that missing nin can get their hands on. Again intelligence told them no one of that band was superb enough in kenjutsu to make such a clean cut especially on a kenjutsu specialist like his wife which implied that they would not have high quality swords in their arsenal. The report stated that Hikari engaged the leader in a kenjutsu battle and lost but the leader favored ninjutsu and only had average kenjutsu skills, even if somehow a specialist lost in their specialty somehow to someone with mediocre skills in that area, this cut was too skillful and deliberate. Both of these deaths did not add up.

The others were about to finish up and call this over and done with and if Kagami wasn't so personally involved in this case, he probably would not have found the inconsistencies but since he personally knew the skillset of both of the deceased in a personal level these were obvious to him. He told them his suspicions and after another check-through the team agreed with him and thus the investigation continued and a note was made to the Hokage to call in Orochimaru for questioning on the inaccuracies in his report.

Kagami stayed far longer in the autopsy room than he originally planned to and never noticed when day became night, his mind now focused completely on finding out the truth.