Shinobi Leaves: What Lies Beneath

Ami Inuzuka isn't quite sure how she feels about her first Genin team. Her fellow Jounin make it seem easy, but dealing with three twelve-year-olds fresh from the Academy is driving her crazy! One of her students is color blind, another one uses hand puppets to communicate and the third is deathly afraid of dogs, including Ami's pet, Ryu. After a close call with the children, Ami's feeling the pressure of past mistakes. Ready to give up, she gives the kids one last, simple mission. Unbeknownst to the Inuzuka, there's someone out there who desperately wants to get their hands on one of her kids. And they're willing to do anything. Will Team 6 manage to pull themselves together in time to prevent disaster? Find out in the first of the Shinobi Leaves series, What Lies Beneath, updating every Tuesday and Thursday!

Rating: PG-13 (Some Violence and Sexually-Themed Humor)
Pairings: Vary

Shinobi Leaves, Characters © wolfram18, angeloflight123
Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto

Prologue

4

"Kai!" Her throat grew raw. He fell to his knees, clutching at the katana blade that had pierced him just below his collarbone. Ami caught him and eased him into her lap. Behind him, his attacker was rushing forward. Ami whistled and Ryu appeared as a blur, flying through the air and grabbing the man by the throat. The dog's body swung around the man before his esophagus gave way and Ryu ripped it free of his body.

Ami turned her attention to the dying man in her arms. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to decide how best to help him. Kai made the attempt to reach behind him to pull the sword from his body. She wasn't trained as a Medic-nin, but she knew enough that you were never to pull a weapon out of you without a squad around you that was trained to handle the bleeding, both internal and external. Kai was in no shape to try healing himself. Still, she helped him remove the blade. A fresh gush of blood flowed over her legs.

"Kai, I don't know how to help you," she told him, trying to keep her voice steady. Kai took her hands and put them over the wound. She choked back a sob when he tried to exert pressure and couldn't. So she did it for him. Other squad members were moving around them, coming to and fro from the fight on the edge of the village. "Help me!" Ami called to them desperately.

A familiar mask appeared from the tall grass. It was Yugao.

"Ami, what happened? Kai!" Yugao dropped to her knees at Kai's head. He was starting to shiver.

"Oh god, Kai, please stop! Please stop it!" Ami begged him. He clenched his teeth tight and grabbed her hand, looping two of his fingers with hers and squeezing them tight. His movements became jerkier as he raised her fingers to his lips and gave them a weak kiss. His eyes locked onto hers. Her heart raced, her breathing labored and her body felt even weaker than from her own wounds. Kai kept her fingers to his lips as he started to gasp for air hard enough that his body jumped with every breath.

One gasp, two gasp.

"Kai?" Ami leaned forward and touched her lips to his forehead, holding him close. With one more lurch of his body, Kai went still. "I love you Kai, I'm so sorry." She whispered. His last breath eased from his lungs along with any sense of feeling for Ami. She felt suddenly numb to it all. The man in her arms was dead. That man was Kai. Kai was one of her best friends, like a brother. And now he was dead. It fell into a confusing jumble that wouldn't click together in her mind.

She tried to breathe calmly. It wasn't hard. It should have been. She should be crying.

No, think of my training. A shinobi dies in the field. Complete the mission no matter what. Complete the mission. Complete the mission. I still have a mission. Ami took a deep breath and sat back. Two more shinobi had joined them. They looked stunned. One of them was the young girl Kai had taken under his wing. Ami couldn't remember her name. She didn't care either.

"We have to keep going. There are more people in that village that need our help. A loss on our side is no reason to quit." Ami said coldly, standing up and turning away from Kai's lifeless body. Her injuries seemed to melt away, as anger flowed through her body. The other squad members shifted uneasily.

"Ami", Yugao began. Ami didn't let her finish.

"We have to move," Ami said coldly as she stepped through the tall weeds toward the flaming village. The rain should have tamed it some, but it burned on angry and defiant.

"Ami." A man stepped in front of her. It was Kakashi.

"What?" She demanded, annoyed.

"Come here?" He requested. Ami glanced at her fellow shinobi, embarrassed that she was being singled out by their leader. Their eyes held none of the teasing that would have normally been there. Her throat grew tight and she huffed, stomping through the grass to a more secluded area, hands still shaking violently.

"We're in the middle of a mission, Kakashi. We don't have time for this." She turned to him.

"If you don't stop, you're only going to get more people killed." He slipped off his ANBU mask, but let the fabric over his mouth and nose remain.

"I didn't get him killed, he did!" She shouted, defensively.

"Ami," Kakashi grabbed her shoulders gently, his mask falling to the ground.

"Please let go of me." She stared into his grey eyes, so different from the lifeless ones of Kai.

"I know how you feel," he told her. "I hated Obito for dying for the longest time. And then Rin… you haven't even noticed that the villagers we weren't able to get out have stopped screaming. They're dead, Ami. Just like Kai."

"We don't know that." She broke from his grasp.

"Yes, we do Ami." He grabbed her again. "Tenzō and I checked for survivors while you were with Kai and Tenzō is still looking. There's no one left."

"They're alive in there, Kakashi. We have to save them!" She grabbed his vest.

"Ami, we have to get the survivors back to base." Kakashi said slowly and firmly.

"But they're alive! He's alive!" She shouted at him, "He has to be! He can't die! I said I would save them, I said I would come back. I told him to be careful! I told him to take Ryu! He just wouldn't listen, and now he's gone." Ami began to sob as she looked into his face, pleading with him. Kakashi pulled her into a tight hug, catching her by surprise.

"Please don't cry, Ami." He said into her ear.

"Kakashi…" She said, shocked, and then buried her face into his ANBU vest and cried. He petted her hair in a softer version of the Kakashi she had grown up with. It was a side she found she liked despite the strong urge to push him away.

"Shhh, it wasn't your fault Ami. Death walks hand in hand with the shinobi life, you know that. He knew that and he died saving lives—your life. I don't know a better way to go." He rested his chin on the top of her head.

"I shouldn't have let him go. I should have gotten up faster," she sniffled and looked up at Kakashi.

"No, you would have been killed too. We were lucky that only one slipped through our line." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Kakashi, I feel like I killed him." She confessed. Her voice broke. He rested his forehead against hers.

"I know Ami. I still blame myself for Obito to this very day." His arms rested comfortably around her.

"Does it ever go away?" She released her grip on his vest and tried to smooth away the wrinkles she had created.

"It didn't for my father." He sighed.

"I'm sorry." An awkward silence passed between them as they realized the position that they were in. Kakashi cleared his throat and said, "No, I'm sorry. I should have known about the forces in the woods."

"Ami!" Tenzō ran toward them. He stopped a few feet short of them and the two shinobi broke apart abruptly. Tenzō barely noticed as he pulled Ami into an embrace, ripping his mask from his face. He kissed her neck and cheeks. "Ami, are you okay? I was so worried! I'm so sorry about Kai, sweetie." He held her close. She didn't know what to say. Everything worth saying, she had said to Kakashi. The silver-haired man picked up his mask from the ground and put it back on. Their eyes met for a moment and then he was once again the cold, distant shinobi she had known for so long.