Summary: Do not deny the awesomeness that is Team thirteen-zero, aka Team GAI. (AU)
Disclaimer: Toboe LoneWolf does not own Naruto. Or a helicopter, or any explosives, or guns, unless you count water guns. Which totally does not count at all.

Note: I originally was going to continue/elaborate on this AU concept some more, but school and time got in the way, so some day, I hope (I will) continue writing in this AU-verse. Because Team Gai with guns is the most awesome thing in the universe.

NINJA: Razorblade Kiss

"Operative one-three-seven, ready?" The computer-virtual voice waits for the voice-recognition to register.

"Ready!"

The room turned pitch black and Tenten stood at alert for the first sign.

There!

A flash is all she needs. Gunfire lit up the room temporarily as Tenten, Operative one-three-seven, raised the new high score on the gun-training simulation. She runs and twists and dodges the thin, almost invisible laser beams as she races to complete the target set before the one-minute limit is up.

Tenten smirked as the lights turn back on, flipping her goggles up as she surveyed her targets.

One hundred percent, all the time.

That was Tenten's motto.

She was the famed weapons expert of the NINJA group, of Team thirteen-zero, with members Hyuuga Neji and Rock Lee, or Operatives one-three-zero and one-three-five, respectively. Together they made up NINJA's most elite fighting squad, with a weapons expert, genius hacker, and martial arts expert.

Hostage system? Team thirteen-zero.

Virus infection? Team thirteen-zero.

Need to quell an underground uprising? Team thirteen-zero.

If you wanted espionage, you called for Team eight-four or Team ten-three. If you wanted strength, you called for Team S-3. If you wanted something out of the ordinary, you called for Team seven-zero. But if you needed fighting, pure and simple, be it through air or cyberspace or alleyways, you called for Team thirteen-zero.

Tenten smiled as she exited the simulation room, unwrapping the belt system of practice guns from her body. Sometimes it was just felt good to let 'er rip with plain old-fashioned guns, the feel of solid recoil and vibration. She hung up the practice gear and re-strapped her own, shifting until the weight of all of her guns felt comfortable. Crossing the basement hallway of the NINJA practice facility she came to the small area of computers, where the intelligence division could freely mess with their coding. As always, there was Neji, working on his laptop.

"Got a new worm?" Tenten looked over Neji's shoulder as numbers scrolled by.

Neji grunted, typing away. "New port attacking pathway. I'm testing it against a low level network right now—"

"Oh?" Tenten laughed. "Another piece of cyberspace soon to belong to Hyuuga Neji?"

Neji smirked. "Hah. I own the interweb."

"Sure, as shown as Sasuke drops out of the game you two are playing."

Neji growled at Tenten's retort. "As if."

"Hey, hey! Not doubting you, oh genius nerd."

"I am geekily offended at that."

"But a proud one."

Neji flicked his forefinger. "Of course. Along with incredibly intelligent, suavely handsome—"

"Neji? Shut up."

"Love you too."

Neji grinned as Tenten smacked him. He loved bantering with Tenten, shooting back and forth at each other. Tenten said it was kind of like rapid return cross-fire. Neji said it was kind of like coding on the fly as the program runs. Lee said they should just get a room.

Speaking of Lee…

"Ho, friends! I have just completed the new fighting sequence that Gai created! It was truly exhilarating!" Lee came bounding up to them, excited as he always was after practice.

"Heyla, Lee," Tenten waved. "What's up?"

"Well, Naruto's team has been called out again; sounds like they've got some animal-criminal with genetically-engineered snakes running loose. So you know how that goes. Crazy stuff goes to Team seven. Team eight's just got back; Team S reported in last night and they'll be back sometime this afternoon." Lee shrugged. "Other than that, nothing much."

Tenten groaned and slipped off her goggles, running her hand through her bangs. "Geez, I want some action. Where's all the mafia? There's gotta be some mafia-ring we can bust."

"We busted the last mafia ring two weeks ago," Neji said off-hand, tabbing through windows.

"That so does not count. There were only five people. Five! In a basement! Where are the days when we blazed through ten-story buildings?"

"I think they've all been razed after you used your explosives on them," Neji snorted.

"It was a completely justified reason to use HMX."

"Says Explosions-Obsessed."

"I only used it twice!"

"And the dynamite, and the TNT, and the TATP-bullets—"

"Hey! They work!"

Lee rolled his eyes. It didn't matter where they were, Neji and Tenten would always be bantering at each other. He was just glad NINJA rooms were soundproof – he really didn't want to know what happened when they did "get a room."

"Guys! Want to try the new fighting sequence Gai made?" Lee interrupted. "It's got a team-based option."

Both Tenten and Neji's eyes lit up at that. Their heading officer might be a little off in some areas, but there was no arguing that in the area of fighting sequence simulations, his were the best. Wildly unpredictable in the way only Gai could make them, wholly crazy, and just plain fighting frenzy – once you figured out the secret. Team thirteen-zero didn't mind testing the other heading officers preferred simulations; after all, NINJA squads should be versatile, but who could blame them for liking the fighting-oriented ones? They liked what they were best at.

Tenten grinned. "Man, it seems like ages since Gai came up with something!"

"And," Lee raised a finger, "I have heard that Gai partly collaborated with Kakashi on this,"

Now Neji looked really interested. Kakashi was perhaps NINJA's most famous hacker, with his top-secret Sharingan programming coding techniques. Neji was always battling to prove the Jyuuken techniques to be just as deadly and effective. This was bound to be good.

"I'm in."

Lee raised a fist. "To the simulation!"

x x x x x

Gai had tears in his eyes as his team came out of the simulation room, with a time even lower than he expected.

"My youthful students have beaten Kakashi's most clever and ingenious loop!"

Neji snorted as he slipped of his helmet. "Hah. Looked like he forgot how the Hyuuga style goes out first, then pinpoints in. Maybe he was thinking Sasuke would fall for the eternity loop, but not my Jyuuken."

"You gotta admit though, that physical manifestation of the viral core was a neat twist though," Tenten grinned, shaking the simulation's attachment-straps off. "Had to let a bullet fly past your eyes before you noticed that."

"Almost knocked off my com-link; that wasn't for my eyes, that was my mouth."

"You missed the first one then. One track mind, hmm?"

"Methodically driven."

"Mmm-hmm."

Lee grinned as he watched his two teammates poking at each other. Sure, it was a strange sort of love, but what kind of love in NINJA ranks wasn't? Gai and Lee shared a look. Lee grinned even wider. He bet Gai threw in the sunset just for these two.

"And Neji, that was totally cheesy."

"What was?"

"The sunset thing. Honestly, I'm the one carrying the grappling hook. You do not need to heroically hack into a helicopter and grab me off the building."

"And what were you planning to do, leap across a four-lane road to get to the other building before your explosives go off?"

"Exactly."

"That makes absolutely no sense."

"Neither does kissing me as you dragged me into the helicopter."

"Oh, you prefer something more…" Neji smirked as he turned to face Tenten. "…substantial?" His voice lowered into a half-growl.

Tenten's hand crept up to Neji's shoulder, her voice a bit breathless as the adrenaline rush from the simulation kept pulsing through her. "Something a little more substantial than a razorblade kiss, yes."

So Neji did.