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 an email and particular thanks to The Horseman of Death, v, sadie237, kanazerosukenaru, richon, Prism0467 and Darling425 who reviewed chapter 52.

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.

Warning: this chapter starts with the description of someone dying.

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Chapter fifty-three: Print

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Ranmaru remembered dying.

Specifically he remembered the flash of the huge blade, something touching his neck and the world tumbling. Then he had been right way up but swinging side to side. A headless body, his, was on the ground. There was blood fountaining from the neck.

The ground came up towards him and he briefly saw the rim of a container less than a handsbreadth from his face.

Then his vision had blurred. In retrospect, he thought that was when his eyeballs froze in the liquid nitrogen. It was the last thing he remembered.


He had woken in a bed. Beside the bed was Konan-san. He wriggled his toes and his fingers. They seemed attached. As soon as he moved, Konan-san took his right hand and squeezed it.

“How are you feeling, Ranmaru-kun?” she asked.

He was angry. He wanted Konohamaru. With direct physical contact he could feel Konan-san’s emotions. They were cool. She was detached. At most she was mildly concerned for him. “I am comfortable, Konan-san. Thank you for asking,” he replied.

Her lips quirked in something closer to a grimace than a smile. “So polite,” she acknowledged. “Your recovery has been lengthy,” she told him. “You are still weak.”

She was lying. There was something amiss about the word recovery and she did not think he was weak.

“I am tired,” he lied back. “And confused,” he added.

“It was a drastic way of retrieving you,” she admitted. “However, your brain is communicating well with your new body.”

That was part truth, part lie.

She produced a bottle and shook out two pills. The gesture was familiar; there had always been a lot of pills. Ranmaru did what he would have done when he lived with her. He reached for the glass of water on the table by the bed and put out a hand for the pills.

His compliance lulled her into a false sense of security. She did not notice him palm the pills or push them beneath the pillow as he turned onto his side; apparently preparing to sleep.

She did not wait to check. He heard her walk away, followed by the closing and the locking of the door.


His mind was racing. He decided to ignore the fact there might be cameras in the room. He needed to find out as much as possible and quickly. He hopped out of bed, drank the rest of the water and then pushed the open end of the glass to the door and his ear to the glass.

“...normally,” Konan was saying. “We only have two?”

“Tried three but the third was very poor,” a man’s voice answered. “We stuck it in stasis. With a net to net transfer, the first mindprint is always the best. That’s the one you just saw. The other one is next door.”

“Here we go again,” Konan replied.

There were footsteps and the sound of a door opening and closing. Ranmaru moved the glass to the side wall. He listened until he heard Konan say, “How are you feeling, Ranmaru-kun?”

It was enough. He felt sick.


He cast about the room for a place to hide the pills. The stool Konan had sat on had tubular metal legs with rubber feet. He pulled off one of the feet, put the pills into the tube and replaced the end.

He then replaced the glass on the table, got into bed and pretended to sleep. After a few minutes he heard a sound at the door. He thought it was someone sliding open a small hatch and checking the room.

It was not the type of thing people did if they had a camera in the room. Ranmaru smiled to himself.


The days that followed were difficult. They wanted information. He would not give it. For the first two days Konan tried to persuade him. He politely refused. Then a man came. He was a great deal less pleasant. Ranmaru battled his fear but there was no way he was going to tell them anything that could be used against Konohamaru or the children.

They were remarkably unconcerned. It was worrying. They had gone to great lengths to plant a spy in Uchiha and retrieve him. They should be incandescent with rage that he was refusing to cooperate. Instead they were reacting as if it were a minor inconvenience. With each day that passed, they were increasingly smug.

There was only one explanation; the Ranmaru next door was telling them everything they wanted to hear.


By this time Ranmaru had worked out how often they checked the rooms; he had twenty minutes at a time. He continued to hide the pills in the leg of the stool. He listened into a few of the exchanges between Konan and the Ranmaru next door. It was enough to confirm that he was answering her questions with a distressing amount of detail.

He called her Konan-san and was obviously desperate for her approval. She had started calling him Ranmaru-chan. She told him that he was a good boy. She even, occasionally, told him that she loved him like a son.

Had he ever been like that? He squirmed, mortified, recalling a time when he would have done anything to have Konan pretend to be his mother.

Konan and the man, the same one who questioned him, continued their bad habit of speaking in the corridor. They were, as he had suspected, delighted with the information the other Ranmaru was giving them. He discovered that there was a reason why they had not given up on him. It sometimes took time for a mindprint to settle. There was a chance his childhood memories would come to dominate and his allegiance would revert to Konan. If it did, he would be useful because the first mindprint was always the best.

They were beginning to doubt it would happen. They were discussing placing him in stasis. They talked about keeping the other Ranmaru around to give further information.


Then he eavesdropped on the conversation that changed everything. He had been listening for minutes. It was uninteresting. He had been about to give up.

“We might be keeping one or more of the children,” the man said. “Pein is asking whether it would be safe to use this Ranmaru to look after them, like the other one did in the Uchiha household. It is important that we integrate them. As an empath he could be extremely useful.”

“He would do anything I asked of him,” Konan replied with confidence.

But Ranmaru was no longer listening. They were going to use the information the other Ranmaru had given them to kidnap the children. Perhaps they had already done so. He was going into stasis while the other Ranmaru persuaded the children that Konan and the others loved them, the first step in turning them against Uchiha.

He had to change places with the other Ranmaru.


He thought for a long time and finally came up with a plan. During ship’s night he and the other Ranmaru were assumed to be in a drugged sleep. If there was an emergency, it was likely that someone would evacuate them from their rooms. If he was unlucky, they would wake them first. If the Lady was with him, they would move them while they were unconscious and, maybe, he would have an opportunity to change places with the other Ranmaru. If he did, he would pour an overdose of powdered drugs into the other Ranmaru’s mouth.

If it worked, they would think that he had tried to kill himself.

He felt only marginally guilty about injuring, or possibly killing, the other Ranmaru. It was almost like he had a right to make the decision because they were the same person. It was very strange.

He decided that the best emergency would be a fire with lots of smoke. Starting fires was one of the skills he had acquired as a feral child. There was a lot of chaos when people were panicking. People left stuff unattended and the smoke gave excellent cover.

Both Shino-san and Konohamaru had been very careful to explain how to do wiring properly in order to avoid the possibility of fire. It would be easy to use the information for sabotage. He already knew what types of materials produced a lot of smoke when they burnt.

Ideally, the fire would start in the bulkhead where wall between the two rooms met the corridor.

Luck was with him; there was a plug socket in the wall at that end of his room. Given the way ships were usually wired, there was almost certainly a similar fitting on the other side of the wall.

Next he needed tools. Again, having lived wild was an advantage; he was good at improvising something from what others would see as nothing. A sliver of one material became an edge to cut another. He slowly and carefully worked the plug socket free; it was essential not to cause any damage that would be obvious.

Ten minutes here, five minutes there; by the evening of the next day he was ready. The guard delivered one of the small, twice-a-day meals, which he ate obediently. Then Konan came with the pills.

“I would be very pleased with you if you would answer our questions, Ranmaru-kun,” she reminded him. She held out the pills.

It was always that or some version of that. “I understand, Konan-san, but I cannot,” he answered, accepting the pills and pretending to take them.

She no longer made any effort to convince him; he had become unimportant. He wondered briefly if she was even ‘his’ Konan. Perhaps she was another mindprinted clone.


He waited for her to leave and the guard to check his room. He made sure he had the drug; a single dose for him and a massive overdose for the other Ranmaru. Then he pulled the plug socket from the wall, disconnected the local fuse and altered the wiring. With great care so not to electrocute himself, he pushed the wires back into the wall so that the fault would be close to the tinder he had placed earlier that day.

He went to bed and pretended to sleep.


It worked, which was good. However no alarm was raised and no one came. The room started filling with smoke.

The plan would only work if he was in bed, apparently asleep, when they opened the door. He lay still. He would start coughing soon. Perhaps that would be fine. Maybe drugged people coughed.


There was a new sound, not loud, that could be a distant alarm. Then, thankfully, running footsteps.

The door opened.

“Make sure you know which is which,” a voice ordered.

“I’ve got wrist bands,” another replied. “Ranmaru One for this one, Ranmaru Two for the other. Grab him before he dies of smoke inhalation.”

Ranmaru forced himself to stay limp. He was picked up and dumped on a gurney. Someone stretched a bracelet over his left hand; it trapped some hairs as it contracted around his wrist.


He was rushed away. The noises suggested that they went along a corridor and into a room. A mask was placed over his face. The oxygen-enriched air smelt good.

“You sure it is safe to leave them here?” one voice asked.

“They are thoroughly doped,” the other replied. “Come on, we can’t afford to allow the fire to spread through the conduits.”


He heard the door open and shut. He risked opening his eyes slightly and scanning the room through his eyelashes. The other Ranmaru was on another gurney beside him.

Now was best, while they were busy with the fire.

Within minutes it was done. The other Ranmaru was where he had been, wearing his wristband with powdered pills under his tongue. He replaced the oxygen mask.

Ranmaru Two had become Ranmaru One.

He checked his wristband, dry-swallowed the dose of pills that Konan had last given, replaced the oxygen mask and lay down on the gurney.


He woke in a strange place, neither the room in which they had parked the gurneys nor a cabin like the ones in which he and the other Ranmaru had been living. His limbs ached in the way they did when you had been taken from a tank.

The room was different. It reminded him of the Oak or the household on Tarrasade. It was decorated rather than merely functional.

“You awake?” a voice asked. It sounded feminine yet deep and warm. Ranmaru turned his head and was startled to see a female version of Kiba. “I am Hana. I serve Konan-sama. I have a message from Konan-sama for you. She has told me to tell you that things are different here. Everyone has their position. Now that you are a servant, you should stay in your place as she will remain in hers.” Hana’s expression softened. “Us servants only speak to the Akatsuki when we are given permission.”

Ranmaru tried to strike the correct note. “I am grateful that Konan-san has found me a position. It is an honour to serve her.”

“Konan-sama,” Hana corrected gently. “At the moment, Konan-sama, Pein-sama and Zetsu-san are in residence. They will be treated with the utmost respect. Your name is Ranmaru?”

Ranmaru forced his aching body off the bed. He bowed. “Yes, Hana-san, I am Ranmaru.”

She smiled at him. “Do not let them hear you calling a hybrid or a print ‘san’. I am merely Hana.”

“A ‘print’?” he queried.

She frowned slightly. “A mindprinted clone,” she clarified.

“Like me,” he suggested.

“Like you,” she agreed. “Have a shower and get dressed. You will always be clean and neat in appearance. You will always keep your room tidy. You will begin your duties immediately,” she told him.


There was a tiny shower and head in an alcove off his small room. He noticed that he was still wearing the wristband with the words ‘Ranmaru Two’ inscribed on it. He took it off and put it in a drawer. Once he had showered and scrubbed himself dry with a towel, he dressed in the clothes provided. It was a simple grey outfit, like the one Hana had been wearing, but the symbol on the breast and the back was yellow rather than blue. Ranmaru examined it. He thought it might represent a cloud.

He was just ready when Hana returned. She studied him and the room.

“Good,” she acknowledged. “Follow me.”

He obeyed.

“You will help care for the child. He is unhappy. You will try to make him less unhappy,” she explained. “Konan-sama says that you have memories of him.”

They paused at a door. Hana unlocked it. Inside was a large room; beautifully decorated and filled with toys.

“Go away,” a child shouted. “I want Shi-chan. I know you have Shi-chan. I won’t eat and I won’t play until I’ve seen Shi-chan.”

“That’s Haru,” Ranmaru stated. Even though he had known they intended to kidnap the children, the reality of Haru being here rather than with the others in the nursery or the playroom was shocking.

“He was rude and disrespectful to Konan-sama,” Hana told him. “But Konan-sama has given orders that he should not be punished.”

“He is used to being with his siblings and with his parents and with Shika-san,” Ranmaru explained. “And with Kiba-san. Kiba-san is Guardian to the Uchiha children. He is a dog-human hybrid like you. An Amachi hybrid like you,” he added.

She stared at him but did not acknowledge his words. “You will spend time with him. You will try to calm him and persuade him to eat and to sleep.”

Ranmaru decided to push. “Do you have Shikamaru-san? If you do, even a few minutes of contact might solve the problem,” he suggested.

She frowned slightly. “I shall relay your suggestion to Konan-sama,” she decided. “Try your best.”


Ranmaru went into the room. The voice had come from a far corner. Haru was scrunched between the walls and the floor. He looked very small. He was far too pale with black circles under his eyes. His cheeks were tear-stained.

As he approached Haru looked at him.

“You aren’t Ranmaru. Ranmaru is dead,” he accused. “I want Shi-chan,” he shouted. “I know you have Shi-chan. I won’t eat and I won’t play until I’ve seen Shi-chan.”

Ranmaru thought he heard Hana sigh as the door was closed and locked behind him.

“Go away,” Haru ordered.

“I do not expect you to trust me,” Ranmaru told him in a low voice, “but I strongly recommend you carry on doing exactly what you are doing now. I think they are beginning to crack.”

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