Iteration

‘Iteration’ is part of the space saga that began with ‘In the cold of space you find the heat of suns’ and continues in ‘Tales in Tarrasade’. There is also a one-shot ‘Silver Leaf Tales: Tying the knot’.

Thanks to Small Fox for being my beta. For this story he has also been my muse, suggesting a number of the ideas that have evolved to create this arc.

Thank you to those readers who have written a review or sent and email and particularly meow-ku, blugirlami21, Prism0467, v, sadie237, richon, Moonmoore, Darling425 and cynaga who reviewed chapter 47.

Apologies if the characters have grown differently in their new environment.

This is posted in the Naruto/Sasuke section because it is part of a Naru/Sasu/Naru space saga. However, it does feature many other pairings (and a few threesomes). Apologies to those who are expecting Naruto/Sasuke or Sasuke/Naruto every chapter.

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Chapter forty-eight: Progress

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Sasuke stared at the now familiar pattern of coloured dots. Each strategy meeting there were more dots but Shikamaru never seemed to think he had made any significant progress. This time, however, Shikamaru appeared more positive.

“I think we should plan to interrogate Kabuto or Orochimaru,” he announced. “The balance of probabilities is now that they have personal knowledge of the people we are trying to find.”

“About time,” Kakashi retorted.

“How?” Neji asked.

“As I have said before, I am unconvinced that capturing them and interrogating them will be effective,” Shikamaru reminded them. “However, from what Kotohime has told us, infiltration may work. Orochimaru has a weakness for beautiful women. I recommend that we hire a professional spy.”

Sasuke did not like the idea. Uchiha did not hire spies or assassins.

“You have someone in mind,” Neji suggested.

“I asked Klenn,” Shikamaru admitted. “He told me how to make contact with a professional with sufficient expertise. Of course, her identity and appearance has to remain a secret as will ours to her.” He looked directly at Sasuke. “We have to do something. Passive information collection is proving too slow.”

“A spy for hire can always be turned,” Kakashi reminded them.

“We will cross-check everything she sends us against other sources,” Shikamaru assured them.

“Very well,” Sasuke decided, resolving to question Shikamaru more closely about it once they were alone. “Is there anything more about our search for Ranmaru’s killers?”

One by one Shikamaru, Kakashi and Neji agreed that they had nothing else to add.


Neji offered to make tea. Sasuke and Kakashi discussed personnel. Shikamaru went off somewhere in his head. Once the tea was made Sasuke recommenced the meeting.

“Next topic,” he said. “Our campaign to recruit crews.”

Shikamaru gave the type of smile that always warned of unexpected news. Sasuke braced himself.

“Out of the first batch, seven hundred and forty-three crews have made it through the selection process,” he announced cheerfully.

Sasuke blinked at him. He checked the others. Kakashi was utterly still. Neji actually had an expression; he looked shocked.

“That many?” Sasuke queried.

“It was a success rate of one from sixty-two,” Shikamaru continued. “This is only slightly higher than I anticipated. However, there were more applications than I expected.”

“Over forty-six thousand crews applied?” Kakashi asked.

Shikamaru seemed unperturbed. “Yes. I had to increase the capacity of the selection procedure twenty-eight times.” He smiled. “It was a fantastic idea, Sasuke-sama. They are all going to be sending in regular reports. Imagine, all those eyes in all those places.”

“We are going to accept all seven hundred and forty?” Neji checked.

“Seven hundred and forty-three,” Shikamaru reminded him. “Out of this first batch. Next they go on extended trial for two standards, like we discussed. There really isn’t a downside.”


Sasuke noticed that Shikamaru lingered when the others left, even without being asked.

“How long since you started looking for a suitable spy?” Sasuke asked.

“Five divs,” Shikamaru admitted. “She has been building her cover on Lightning for the last three. She is ready to attempt contact as soon as I send word.”

Sasuke sighed. “What happened to keeping me informed about the significant stuff?”

“It wasn’t significant until she was ready to make contact,” Shikamaru answered without the slightest indication that he saw anything amiss with his reply.

Sasuke sighed; it really was like dealing with an older version of Haru.

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Naruto much preferred the life of a spacer nomad. He felt trapped in Tarrasade but on the Oak they were always going somewhere. It was not that the day-to-day life was significantly different but it felt right in a way that living in the household in Tarrasade never did.

They were striking a nice balance of familiar and new. They were laying chains of mini-gates along obscure routes that required an improver. They were visiting HDL offices in stations and, occasionally, on planets. Uchiha was setting up contacts and employing agents. Shikamaru was collecting information.

Everywhere they went they would receive messages from crews paying their respects; sometimes they were from crews who had embarked on the process of becoming allies.


Daily life had settled. Haru was much happier. Shikamaru spent more time in the playroom and occasionally Haru would go with him to the laboratory. Hikaru had responded badly, as they had known he would. Sasuke had repeatedly explained to him that Haru would get what Haru needed and Hikaru would get what Hikaru needed.

What Hikaru needed was Sasuke’s, Kakashi’s and Inari’s approval. They made him work for it but made sure it was never beyond his reach.

The babies grew steadily in their gestators. Mai finally decided she liked eating and sleeping. Hamaki, Terai and Fu’s daughter was born and called Naomi.


Best of all, in Naruto’s opinion, Shikamaru built in visits to the Warren, to Haven and to Kaze. The latest visit to Kaze had started in Kaze III with the Gourd docking so that Gaara and Lee could pay a protracted visit.

Gaara inhaled. “It was the smell of this room that first made me want a mate,” he announced.

Naruto winced. He had hesitated to show Gaara and Lee the new babies because their gestators were still in his and Sasuke’s bedroom. They had yet to come up with a location for the new nursery that would allow both them and Kiba access without displacing the children.

Lee studied the projected holo. “This baby is you without the fox genes?” he queried in awed tones.

“As close as Rin can make him using Kotohime’s technology,” Naruto confirmed. “The girls are combinations of my genes and Sasuke’s genes.”

Gaara was looking at the ceiling. “You could go up, or down,” he announced.

Naruto stared at him. “Gaara?” he checked.

“Put the new nursery above or below the current one,” Gaara told him.

It was an interesting idea; one they would have to consider.

“What’s his name?” Lee asked.

“Tsuneo,” Naruto answered.

That caught Gaara’s attention. “Eternal hero?” he queried. “No pressure there then.”

Naruto flushed. “Sasuke chose it. The girls are Takara and Teruko.”

“All three are lovely names,” Lee assured him. “Full of hope for the future.” He checked the chronometer on his wrist. He bowed. “Please excuse me, Naruto-san. I agreed to meet Sumaru.”

“Remember that Iruka-sensei has invited you for the midday meal,” Naruto reminded him. “Choza-san is making something special.”

“I shall not be tardy, Naruto-san,” Lee assured him.


Naruto suggested that they go to the galley but Gaara said that he preferred the apartment. They went via the playroom to tell Kiba where they would be; the plan was that he would join them when Sasuke arrived to run a music session.

Gaara looked about the complex of rooms. “This has changed,” he observed. “We could wait here until Kiba is ready.”

“The children will bother you,” Naruto warned.

“I am used to children now,” Gaara told him. “Some of those who came from the Warren had adopted hybrids that Fuma had rejected.”


They sat in the rocking chairs in the old playroom. Unexpectedly, the children stayed in the other room. Naruto decided that some Gaara-style bluntness would not be amiss.

“Are you and Lee mates?” he asked.

Gaara was silent for a moment. “We are partners for fucking,” he answered slowly. “Unlike you, I do not have multiple triggered behaviours. I have not bonded to him.” He looked wistful. “I wanted what you have with Sasuke.”

Naruto twitched his whiskers. “The love is much more important than the bonding,” he insisted.

Gaara looked about the room. “The children are an expression of your love,” he suggested.

“Believe me, the children are people,” Naruto insisted. “But we do love them very much.”

“These three babies, they will be with Sasuke when you are dead,” Gaara observed.

“Yes,” Naruto answered.

“Temari would like that very much,” Gaara admitted.

Naruto looked at him. “Not Lee?” To his surprise, he thought he saw tears in Gaara’s eyes. “Gaara?”

“I will think on it,” Gaara promised him.

“Rin could make a humanised set of your chromosomes,” Naruto suggested. “They would just be individual chromosomes, not a baby. If you decided you did not want a baby, you could give them to Temari as a gift.”

Gaara perked up. “That is an excellent idea,” he declared. Then he focused on the doorway to the new playroom. “I believe that the children have finished what they were doing.”

Naruto watched the stampede come towards them, led by Yo-chan and Ya-chan. “I think so,” he agreed.


The three of them managed to extract themselves before they completely ruined the start of Sasuke’s session. All it cost them was a promise that they would come back and listen to the children perform later in the day.

They were soon lounging on couches in Gaara’s apartment.

“I miss having a place like this,” Gaara admitted. “Sometimes Lee and I sneak onto the Gourd just to have a little luxury.”

“Is the Sanctuary your forever place?” Kiba asked Gaara.

Naruto stayed very quiet; he had never heard Kiba speak of a forever place.

“I am not sure,” Gaara admitted. “You have found yours,” he stated.

“Yes,” Kiba admitted. “Sasuke-sama has promised me. I shall help raise the children until I am too old. Then Uchiha will look after me.”

Naruto remembered the old dog-human hybrid at the refuge where he had found Ryuu. He blinked back tears. “We will grow old together,” he suggested.

“Perhaps,” Kiba replied. “Rin-san says that it will be quick, like it is for a purebred when the age retard breaks down. That will suit me.”

Naruto rolled off the couch and onto his feet. “This is morbid. Let’s go to the onsen,” he suggested.

Gaara stared at him. “You have an onsen?”

“Shi-chan,” Naruto said by means of explanation.

“That man,” Gaara complained with a shake of his head. “You would not believe what I discovered he had given Lee.”

---

Shikamaru had juggled not presenting the Oak as a target with staying in the Kaze system in order to extend Gaara and Lee’s visit. They had lurked beyond a hole in the Kaze III system that could only be used by a ship with an improver. A pair of minigates across the hole had ensured the flow of information.

Even so, Shikamaru had only been able to extend the visit to ten days. Any longer and the probability of someone tracking their movements went into the yellow zone. Now they were back to the usual routine of installing minigates, hacking data relays and developing contacts.

He sighed. Progress in finding their enemy was frustratingly slow. On bad days Shikamaru kept going back to the assumptions he had made and questioning his deductions.


What little he had did not fit together. He had firm evidence that Ranmaru had existed in two places between the ages of eight and eleven; living with a woman named Konan and in an orphanage in a completely different system. He could not decide which had actually happened; someone in the enemy’s organisation was extremely skilled at planting false information.

He had found Ranmaru’s home planet; there were few planets that treated feral children as vermin. There was no significant population of empaths; two copies of a rare recessive gene must have come together in Ranmaru. He managed to find the ghost of the analysis of Ranmaru’s genome; the child catcher had settled for a simple delete.

He had almost missed it. It was over a decade earlier than he had expected. The only explanation was that Ranmaru had been kept in stasis for a significant amount of time, presumably until they needed an empath.

He had dispatched Tennyo Two to find out who could have transported Ranmaru away from his home planet. Her secondary mission was to investigate ways of persuading the planetary authorities to stop killing children.


The longer he spent on it, the more Shikamaru was convinced that Sasori had been responsible for Gaara’s abduction. He wished he had evidence but tracking Sasori had proved impossible. Shikamaru had settled for accumulating evidence that he had murdered to obtain some of his shells.

He had shared his suspicions and that evidence with Temari-sama during their visit to Kaze. Perhaps she would be able to use the evidence as a bargaining chip. Certainly the chances of extracting information from Sasori by conventional means were extremely low.

There had been one lead. Sasori had stopped murdering to obtain his shells. He had started to use clones. Shikamaru had invested his supplier.

The name Deva had come up. Now he had to investigate which of the many men named Deva he had located was the one that interested him.


It was all so slow. He was pinning far too many hopes on the spy who was investigating Orochimaru. He drained his coffee cup and put it down on the table with slightly too much force.

“Shika?” Neji queried immediately and Shino looked up from his workbench.

Shikamaru made himself relax. The last thing he wanted was Neji analysing his behaviour. “I need a break,” he admitted. “I am going to the playroom. Do you want to come?”

Neji smiled at him. “No. You enjoy yourself.”


The children were gathered around the tables. Both Naruto and Kiba were there, which was unusual. Shikamaru examined the projected hologram and realised that they were discussing the alterations to the nursery.

He found a stool. Haru and Kazuki shifted apart so that he could sit between then.

“We are discussing alternatives based on Gaara-san’s suggestion that we build up or down,” Naruto told him.

“We have to go up,” Hikaru informed him, “because the ship is built in blocks that are two levels big.”

“Down would take us across a boundary,” Kiba confirmed.

“We have two ideas,” Hoshi said, changing the diagram from one to the other.

“Us on top,” Keizo described.

“Or the triplets on top,” Yasushi pointed out.

“Us on top is better,” Kuuya declared with confidence. “We get a bigger room.”

“And we get to slide down a pole,” Kazuki added.

“Maybe,” Naruto conceded.

Shikamaru examined the diagram. It showed a slice taken out of the current nursery to build a spiral staircase up and a pole to slide down. Above there was a room that stretched across the nursery, Kiba’s room and Naruto and Sasuke’s bedroom below.

“It looks good,” he agreed. “What about a laundry chute and a small elevator to take stuff up and down?” he suggested. “Have you thought about how many heads and showers you need up there?”

“It’s too big,” Yuki complained.

Hikaru scowled at him. “No it isn’t.”

Yuki seemed to shrink but he did not yield. “I hate it,” he declared. “It’s ten dens not one.”

Shikamaru saw the anxiety in Naruto’s eyes. “You could move your current nursery up there,” he suggested quickly. “Sometimes it is better to change things bit by bit.”

Kiba slid the controller towards him and Shikamaru created a third version where the children’s new bedroom was identical to the old nursery with the stairs, the pole and some storage to the sides.

The children studied it.

“We still have the pole,” Kazuki pointed out.


“Thank you,” Naruto said once they had decided on the third version with a few tweaks and the children had gone off to wash their hands before the midday meal.

“It was a pleasure,” Shikamaru assured him and braced himself for Kazuki to jump on his back. They were then joined by Haru, Hikaru and Ryuu.

“Thank you, Hi-chan, for agreeing to the smaller room,” Naruto acknowledged. “Such a big change was too much for Yuki-chan.”

“It was not that important,” Hikaru replied.

“We are going to have a pole,” Kazuki insisted, leaning forward across Shikamaru’s shoulder.

Ryuu’s eyes lit up. It was obvious that he liked the idea of the pole as much as Kazuki.

“It’s only a pole,” Hikaru retorted.

Shikamaru watched Ryuu’s whiskers droop and his ears go back. “Guess who will like the pole best,” he challenged.

“Kazuki,” Haru proposed.

“No, not Kazu-chan,” Shikamaru answered.

“Ry-chan then,” Haru suggested.

“No, not Ry-chan,” Shikamaru replied.

Haru and Hikaru suggested each of the other kits in turn while Naruto worked out what Shikamaru was doing.

“Me,” Naruto answered once they had run out of names. “I will love sliding down the pole,” he admitted.

Even Hikaru laughed.


“Did it help?” Neji asked as they walked from the galley to the laboratory together after the midday meal.

“Yes,” Shikamaru admitted. “Being with them helps like being with you helps.” He took Neji’s hand and squeezed it. “Otherwise I get trapped in my head. You promise to insist that I come out of the data streams forty minutes before the evening meal? Even if I am difficult about it?”

Neji squeezed back. “I promise,” he replied. “I have been planning our excursion for when we visit Naruto’s planet.”

Shikamaru smiled, appreciating the distraction. Naruto and Sasuke had decided that it would do the children good to have occasional days of different experiences that they could then describe to each other. As a first step, one day of the proposed trip to Naruto’s planet would have the children in pairs with different adults.

“You can cope with Kazuki as well as Haru?” Shikamaru asked.

“I sincerely hope so,” Neji replied.

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