In the cold of space you find the heat of suns
folder
Naruto › Yaoi - Male/Male › Naruto/Sasuke
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
91
Views:
3,714
Reviews:
636
Recommended:
1
Currently Reading:
3
Category:
Naruto › Yaoi - Male/Male › Naruto/Sasuke
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
91
Views:
3,714
Reviews:
636
Recommended:
1
Currently Reading:
3
Disclaimer:
This story has some of Masashi Kishimoto's characters from Naruto in a universe of my own devising. I do not own Naruto. I do not make any money from these writings.
Conspiracy
Spacer crews travel the Far Borders and the Fringe of occupied space, trading. Spacing is an ancient and honourable profession carved out by millenniums. Most spacers start out as fourteen-year-old boys seeking a future. Few survive a decade spacing.
10. Conspiracy
Naruto had never worried when he did not understand. There had been more important things to worry about, like finding food and not dying. Now he needed to understand the ship and how it worked. That would be the fastest way to improve his score and narrow the gap between him and Sasuke. The problem was that he did not know where to start. He went to talk to Shikamaru. He was in the lab, which was the first place anyone looked for Shikamaru.
“You want to understand everything about the ship?” Shikamaru checked.
Naruto reconsidered. “I need to know as much as Sasuke.”
“He has been training to be a spacer since he was born,” Shikamaru told him, but the fox-boy just shrugged. “Let me think about it, Naruto. I’ll get back to you.” He could see that Naruto wasn’t too taken by that idea. “Why don’t you start by having a go on one of the simulators?”
That distracted Naruto while Shikamaru thought. He liked this type of problem, because it seemed impossible to solve it. How did an ignorant, uneducated fox-boy catch up with someone as well bred and carefully raised as Sasuke? Naruto was yelling at the simulator. Shikamaru smiled, then put in his earpieces and goggles and connected to his console. It was interesting.
Naruto could see from Shikamaru’s face that this was going to be complicated. He thought of it as Shikamaru’s ‘trying to explain to Naruto’ expression. Not that he hadn’t seen the same expression on Shikamaru’s face when he spoke with others, but Naruto was pretty sure he saw it more often than anyone else.
“I looked at the problem in three ways,” Shikamaru began.
Naruto nodded, so far so good.
“Firstly, I did a task analysis. I looked at everything you’d need to know, that’s in black, and everything you need to be able to do, that’s in red.”
Naruto shrank back at the huge tangle of black and red that appeared on the display.
“I then removed everything you would be incapable of understanding because you brain won’t work that way.”
The display changed, but not very much.
“This is what I think you could understand and do if we had unlimited time and resources,” Shikamaru reinforced.
It was a lot. It made Naruto feel good. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he had thought he was.
Shikamaru had almost left that step out, in order to make the explanation shorter, but was glad he had not. “This,” he stabbed the pointer and the display simplified hugely, “is what you would need for a Iruka-level understanding of how the ship works. Iruka’s job is to concentrate on the crew, so he doesn’t need to know that much about how the ship works. I think this would be a sensible first goal.”
Naruto frowned at him. “Are you saying that I should aim at being queen of a crew?”
Shikamaru found himself scanning the room for Iruka, even though Iruka almost never came into the lab. Being heard using the term ‘queen’ meant certain retaliation. “No. I am saying that this is the amount of information you need as a starting point. Not that you wouldn’t make a good queen, Naruto. Most people cannot cope with that amount of power. They start hurting people. I don’t think you would.”
Now that made sense to Naruto: for everyday stuff queens had more power than captains. The queens he had met, with the exception of Iruka, were spiteful, vindictive and vicious. The moment they shown any weakness someone would be in there trying to get rid of them. “I really like it here,” he said.
Shikamaru was familiar with Naruto’s tendency to make comments that seemed unrelated to what had gone before but rarely were. “Iruka-sensei makes a good home for us here,” he said and was rewarded by one of Naruto’s best smiles, the one that made you feel like the sun had come out from behind a cloud.
“Iruka-sensei is awesome,” Naruto confirmed. He then saw and smelt Shikamaru’s sudden interest. Shikamaru was like that. “Do you want to stop for a bit and fuck?” Naruto offered.
Shikamaru groaned, “You have to stop doing that, Naruto, it’s too tempting. You know what Iruka will say if he catches us fucking when we are meant to be working.”
“Genma asks for a quickie whenever he wants one. Iruka never says anything.”
“He thinks it,” Shikamaru assured him. “It will come out one time when they have a row.”
Naruto shuddered. He hated it when Genma and Iruka went for each other.
Shikamaru felt slightly guilty for making Naruto feel bad but took the opening it gave him to proceed. This was the tricky bit, because he couldn’t explain why it was important for Naruto to develop the knowledge and skills he would need to be Sasuke’s chief of security. That would mean talking about whom Sasuke was, which would mean Kakashi would kill him. He almost wished he had never worked out. “So that’s our baseline,” he resumed. “Then I thought about you. You are obviously a fighter. So I thought about weapons and that got me thinking about security. You said you were not sure about being queen, Naruto, but what about Ibiki’s job? He keeps the ship safe.”
Naruto nodded. Keeping the ship and the crew safe was important, really important.
“So I have sorted out a five-stage plan for you learning about weapons and security. I thought we could discuss it with Ibiki.”
“Ibiki will like that.” Naruto looked at Shikamaru carefully. “Shall I ask him?”
Shikamaru grimaced; trust Naruto to have picked up that he and Ibiki were never comfortable with each other. When he was cat, Ibiki had told him not to talk when they were fucking. He had been allowed to make noises and gestures, but not to speak. It had probably been the only way that Ibiki could find him attractive enough to fuck, but it had rather soured their relationship.
“Moving on to the third thing,” Shikamaru continued. “I have analysed Iruka’s performance tracker and I have found ten things you can do that are quick, easy and will bump your score up. I thought it would be fun to give Sasuke a bit of a scare.”
Naruto grinned. He jumped and balanced himself on the arms of Shikamaru’s chair with their noses a finger’s breadth apart. One of his whiskers tickled Shikamaru’s cheek. “Are you sure you don’t want that fuck?” he purred.
Kakashi had thought that things were going well. Naruto had recruited Shikamaru to his cause, which had accelerated his progress from impressive to meteoric. Although some of it was Shikamaru manipulating Iruka’s performance tracker, most of it was real. Persuading Ibiki to mentor Naruto was inspired, even for Shikamaru; Kakashi had never heard the big man talk so much. Sasuke was over his initial panic at Naruto’s sudden surge and had responded. He had hacked into Shikamaru’s data and appropriated the analyses he had done on the ship’s systems and Iruka’s performance tracker. He was using his access to Tsunade to improve his understanding of trading.
So it was a shock when Jiraiya made the gesture requesting a secure conversation. That had only happened twice in the fifteen standards they had worked together. Kakashi threw a die, which decided where they would meet, then communicated that information by the way he placed his cutlery. They met, apparently to audit the contents of a packing case, in the second pressurised hold.
“You have to make the decision to recruit Shikamaru or kill him,” Jiraiya told him, “because he knows.”
Kakashi was not surprised. “He is a genius. There are so many small clues.” He frowned. “How do you know he knows?” He could not believe that Shikamaru would say anything, he was sure that he had scared him too much for that.
“There are a few clues in his secured files, which, interestingly, I would not have been able to access if I hadn’t built the system with constant monitoring.”
“He can create security that keeps you out?” Kakashi was impressed. “What clues?”
“Only a twenty-point plan for turning Naruto into the chief of security for an organisation that looks suspiciously like Shikamaru’s vision of what Uchiha should be in the future. A vision which, I have to say, was fascinating.”
“Oh.”
“Is that the sum total of your response? ‘Oh’.” Jiraiya demanded.
“We will recruit him, but not yet. He won’t say anything.”
“And what about Iruka?”
Kakashi stiffened. “Don’t even think of hurting Iruka,” he warned.
“But he knows, doesn’t he? You told him enough that he guessed.”
“He’s as trustworthy as Tsunade, probably more so.”
“There is no point arguing about what has happened. One aspect of the plan is moving forward much more quickly than the others. Too many people on this ship know. We need to consider moving into the next phase.”
“Already?”
“Kakashi, it is not like you to be so resistant. Even the best plans require occasional modification. That is my advice; accelerate the transition to the next phase. It is up to you of you take it.”
10. Conspiracy
Naruto had never worried when he did not understand. There had been more important things to worry about, like finding food and not dying. Now he needed to understand the ship and how it worked. That would be the fastest way to improve his score and narrow the gap between him and Sasuke. The problem was that he did not know where to start. He went to talk to Shikamaru. He was in the lab, which was the first place anyone looked for Shikamaru.
“You want to understand everything about the ship?” Shikamaru checked.
Naruto reconsidered. “I need to know as much as Sasuke.”
“He has been training to be a spacer since he was born,” Shikamaru told him, but the fox-boy just shrugged. “Let me think about it, Naruto. I’ll get back to you.” He could see that Naruto wasn’t too taken by that idea. “Why don’t you start by having a go on one of the simulators?”
That distracted Naruto while Shikamaru thought. He liked this type of problem, because it seemed impossible to solve it. How did an ignorant, uneducated fox-boy catch up with someone as well bred and carefully raised as Sasuke? Naruto was yelling at the simulator. Shikamaru smiled, then put in his earpieces and goggles and connected to his console. It was interesting.
Naruto could see from Shikamaru’s face that this was going to be complicated. He thought of it as Shikamaru’s ‘trying to explain to Naruto’ expression. Not that he hadn’t seen the same expression on Shikamaru’s face when he spoke with others, but Naruto was pretty sure he saw it more often than anyone else.
“I looked at the problem in three ways,” Shikamaru began.
Naruto nodded, so far so good.
“Firstly, I did a task analysis. I looked at everything you’d need to know, that’s in black, and everything you need to be able to do, that’s in red.”
Naruto shrank back at the huge tangle of black and red that appeared on the display.
“I then removed everything you would be incapable of understanding because you brain won’t work that way.”
The display changed, but not very much.
“This is what I think you could understand and do if we had unlimited time and resources,” Shikamaru reinforced.
It was a lot. It made Naruto feel good. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he had thought he was.
Shikamaru had almost left that step out, in order to make the explanation shorter, but was glad he had not. “This,” he stabbed the pointer and the display simplified hugely, “is what you would need for a Iruka-level understanding of how the ship works. Iruka’s job is to concentrate on the crew, so he doesn’t need to know that much about how the ship works. I think this would be a sensible first goal.”
Naruto frowned at him. “Are you saying that I should aim at being queen of a crew?”
Shikamaru found himself scanning the room for Iruka, even though Iruka almost never came into the lab. Being heard using the term ‘queen’ meant certain retaliation. “No. I am saying that this is the amount of information you need as a starting point. Not that you wouldn’t make a good queen, Naruto. Most people cannot cope with that amount of power. They start hurting people. I don’t think you would.”
Now that made sense to Naruto: for everyday stuff queens had more power than captains. The queens he had met, with the exception of Iruka, were spiteful, vindictive and vicious. The moment they shown any weakness someone would be in there trying to get rid of them. “I really like it here,” he said.
Shikamaru was familiar with Naruto’s tendency to make comments that seemed unrelated to what had gone before but rarely were. “Iruka-sensei makes a good home for us here,” he said and was rewarded by one of Naruto’s best smiles, the one that made you feel like the sun had come out from behind a cloud.
“Iruka-sensei is awesome,” Naruto confirmed. He then saw and smelt Shikamaru’s sudden interest. Shikamaru was like that. “Do you want to stop for a bit and fuck?” Naruto offered.
Shikamaru groaned, “You have to stop doing that, Naruto, it’s too tempting. You know what Iruka will say if he catches us fucking when we are meant to be working.”
“Genma asks for a quickie whenever he wants one. Iruka never says anything.”
“He thinks it,” Shikamaru assured him. “It will come out one time when they have a row.”
Naruto shuddered. He hated it when Genma and Iruka went for each other.
Shikamaru felt slightly guilty for making Naruto feel bad but took the opening it gave him to proceed. This was the tricky bit, because he couldn’t explain why it was important for Naruto to develop the knowledge and skills he would need to be Sasuke’s chief of security. That would mean talking about whom Sasuke was, which would mean Kakashi would kill him. He almost wished he had never worked out. “So that’s our baseline,” he resumed. “Then I thought about you. You are obviously a fighter. So I thought about weapons and that got me thinking about security. You said you were not sure about being queen, Naruto, but what about Ibiki’s job? He keeps the ship safe.”
Naruto nodded. Keeping the ship and the crew safe was important, really important.
“So I have sorted out a five-stage plan for you learning about weapons and security. I thought we could discuss it with Ibiki.”
“Ibiki will like that.” Naruto looked at Shikamaru carefully. “Shall I ask him?”
Shikamaru grimaced; trust Naruto to have picked up that he and Ibiki were never comfortable with each other. When he was cat, Ibiki had told him not to talk when they were fucking. He had been allowed to make noises and gestures, but not to speak. It had probably been the only way that Ibiki could find him attractive enough to fuck, but it had rather soured their relationship.
“Moving on to the third thing,” Shikamaru continued. “I have analysed Iruka’s performance tracker and I have found ten things you can do that are quick, easy and will bump your score up. I thought it would be fun to give Sasuke a bit of a scare.”
Naruto grinned. He jumped and balanced himself on the arms of Shikamaru’s chair with their noses a finger’s breadth apart. One of his whiskers tickled Shikamaru’s cheek. “Are you sure you don’t want that fuck?” he purred.
Kakashi had thought that things were going well. Naruto had recruited Shikamaru to his cause, which had accelerated his progress from impressive to meteoric. Although some of it was Shikamaru manipulating Iruka’s performance tracker, most of it was real. Persuading Ibiki to mentor Naruto was inspired, even for Shikamaru; Kakashi had never heard the big man talk so much. Sasuke was over his initial panic at Naruto’s sudden surge and had responded. He had hacked into Shikamaru’s data and appropriated the analyses he had done on the ship’s systems and Iruka’s performance tracker. He was using his access to Tsunade to improve his understanding of trading.
So it was a shock when Jiraiya made the gesture requesting a secure conversation. That had only happened twice in the fifteen standards they had worked together. Kakashi threw a die, which decided where they would meet, then communicated that information by the way he placed his cutlery. They met, apparently to audit the contents of a packing case, in the second pressurised hold.
“You have to make the decision to recruit Shikamaru or kill him,” Jiraiya told him, “because he knows.”
Kakashi was not surprised. “He is a genius. There are so many small clues.” He frowned. “How do you know he knows?” He could not believe that Shikamaru would say anything, he was sure that he had scared him too much for that.
“There are a few clues in his secured files, which, interestingly, I would not have been able to access if I hadn’t built the system with constant monitoring.”
“He can create security that keeps you out?” Kakashi was impressed. “What clues?”
“Only a twenty-point plan for turning Naruto into the chief of security for an organisation that looks suspiciously like Shikamaru’s vision of what Uchiha should be in the future. A vision which, I have to say, was fascinating.”
“Oh.”
“Is that the sum total of your response? ‘Oh’.” Jiraiya demanded.
“We will recruit him, but not yet. He won’t say anything.”
“And what about Iruka?”
Kakashi stiffened. “Don’t even think of hurting Iruka,” he warned.
“But he knows, doesn’t he? You told him enough that he guessed.”
“He’s as trustworthy as Tsunade, probably more so.”
“There is no point arguing about what has happened. One aspect of the plan is moving forward much more quickly than the others. Too many people on this ship know. We need to consider moving into the next phase.”
“Already?”
“Kakashi, it is not like you to be so resistant. Even the best plans require occasional modification. That is my advice; accelerate the transition to the next phase. It is up to you of you take it.”