In the cold of space you find the heat of suns
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Naruto › Yaoi - Male/Male › Naruto/Sasuke
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91
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Category:
Naruto › Yaoi - Male/Male › Naruto/Sasuke
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
91
Views:
3,778
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.
Mosaic
Thank you for the reviews. They inspire me to continue the story.
Two of the scenes in this chapter are for nivell.
Apologies if the characters have grown differently in their new environment.
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.
70. Mosaic
Kabuto had lost twenty-one of his mink-human hybrids in the raid and another five opening the tissue bank. He terminated the remaining four and spaced the bodies; he had another twelve in cryogenic storage should he require them.
He considered activating a cat-human hybrid to fuck during the journey but decided against it. There was work he wished to do.
The woman had gifted him with a running start; there were stem cells from the hybrid in the tissue bank. Within a day he had sixty-four cloned zygotes. He would have liked more, a hundred or even five hundred, but he was too aware that the amount of original tissue was limited.
With his usual starting material he would be lucky to get one functional hybrid from sixty-four but these were stem cells from a Bara hybrid, so he was hoping for more.
Even with accelerated development, the embryos should not required transfer to gestators before he reached Jewel.
Inari gave Gai-san a false but reassuring smile and prepared to hack the light speed communication relay in the gate through which they had just jumped. He could not get Kakashi-sensei’s voice out of his head.
“Neither Gai-san or Inoichi-san have taken to hacking, so it will be up to you. Get it wrong and not only will the journey be wasted but you will delay us finding Kabuto. Worst scenario, you will trigger the installation of better security. Shikamaru-san insists that you are more than capable of doing this. I am relying on you, Inari.”
He wished for a moment that Kakashi had taken the other option and swapped Kunugi and Inoichi, but both Neji and Haku had counselled against trapping Gai and Kunugi together on a ship as small as the Snow Willow.
He could do this. He could justify Kakashi-sensei’s faith in him. He took a deep breath and began.
Sasuke did not expect Shikamaru to turn up at his office with a hover platform. On the platform was a large display frame; Sasuke suspected it was from the dining hall. Shikamaru guided the hover platform to the wall opposite Sasuke’s desk and then lowered it to the floor. He propped up the frame.
“We can attach it to the wall later,” Shikamaru told him. “I recommend you sit down,” he added. Then he turned on the frame.
It was his Naruto. It looked like he was walking away and Sasuke had called his name. He could imagine the moment. Naruto would stop, begin to turn towards him and smile exactly like that.
Sasuke had never before appreciated that a drawing could be more real than a hologram.
“Klennethon Darrent sent it for you,” Shikamaru told him. “He also sent a packet of information to help us find Kabuto.” He took a deep breath. “He wants to negotiate another deal.”
Sasuke was distracted by the picture. Naruto was naked and the artist had used a medium that managed to convey the texture of his skin and the softness of his fur. The colours were glorious, like Naruto in sunlight.
“Sasuke-sama!” Shikamaru demanded.
“Sorry,” Sasuke admitted. “What did you say?”
Konohamaru was acutely aware that he had been placed with Dan and Kunugi, both of whom had outperformed him in the hacking simulations. He felt like a spare part, particularly as Dan and Kunugi were such close friends.
Even Tayuya had been better at the hacking.
He pulled himself together. It was good experience for him to be on a small ship like the Lancet. Spare parts were necessary; Dan or Kunugi could get ill or injured. Dan-san was careful to include him by giving him responsibilities; he could still perform well.
Also there was what Haku had told him, that Kunugi still carried a torch for Dan even though Dan preferred women and now was with Rin. Haku had also briefed Konohamaru on Kunugi’s likes, dislikes and fragilities.
Konohamaru sighed; he knew why Kakashi-san had put him, rather than Inari or Tayuya, with Dan and Kunugi.
Gaara viewed the communication Naruto had sent him and was angry.
This man, this Kabuto, had betrayed Gaara’s friends’ trust and stolen from them.
It was an odd sensation. He usually experienced anger for a fleeting moment before losing control. Gaara would have expected to be unconscious if he was wearing his controller or berserk if he were not.
He was not wearing his controller, he had not worn it since leaving the Oak, yet he was angry and not berserk.
Once his responsibilities were fulfilled, when the slavers had gone and Temari was leader, Gaara would help his friends hunt this Kabuto and reclaim what they had lost.
Naruto accompanied Shikamaru and Sasuke to Sasuke’s office after the midday meal; there was something heavy Shi-chan wanted to hang on the office wall. It turned out to be one of the large display frames from the dining room. Naruto did not ask for reasons, just lifted the frame onto the fixings and held it in place while Shi-chan made it fast.
He was, however, suspicious of the speed with which Shi-chan made his exit.
“Don’t you want to know what it is for, dobe?” Sasuke asked.
Naruto shrugged. “Shi-chan always has his reasons.”
Sasuke activated the frame.
It was him but not him. Did he look like that from behind? Naruto was not familiar with his back.
Then he smelt Sasuke and realised that Sasuke really liked the picture; Naruto was not sure if Sasuke could have the picture in his office if he liked it that much. Sasuke went to his office to work, not to think about fucking.
“Don’t you like it?” Sasuke asked.
Naruto’s whiskers twitched. “I would prefer a picture of you,” he admitted. “Are you sure it should be in your office?”
Sasuke smiled, which made Naruto’s insides flutter. “I have loaded some other images into the frame.” He flicked through a few attractive landscapes and returned to the picture of Naruto.
They had locked the door and were beginning to shed clothes when Naruto found himself studying the picture.
“How did Shi-chan make the picture?” he asked.
Sasuke was removing Naruto’s left boot. “He didn’t, dobe. It isn’t a camera image of you, it’s a camera image of a drawing. Someone drew a picture of you on paper using coloured sticks.”
Naruto stared. “Someone drew it?” he asked. “Who?”
“An artist called Kuroda,” Sasuke told him. “You can see his signature in the corner.”
“If this is an image, where is the drawing?”
Sasuke hesitated before replying. “Klennethon Darrent’s collection,”
Naruto jumped to his feet and snatched his boot from Sasuke’s hands. “Klennethon Darrent is looking at a drawing of me?”
“That was the deal, dobe. We let him image us and he gave the holograms to artists. One of the artists drew a picture of you. It’s a beautiful picture, almost a beautiful as you.”
“Being nice won’t work, teme,” Naruto warned him. “How did you get this image?”
“Klennethon Darrent sent it to Shikamaru with a letter. Shikamaru contacted him to help us find Kabuto.”
Naruto did not like the idea of Shi-chan contacting Klennethon Darrent. Klennethon Darrent was tricky; Naruto did not trust Klennethon Darrent.
“What does he want?” Naruto asked.
Sasuke bit his lower lip. “He wants to know what Kabuto told us about where you came from. In return he will let Shikamaru and Kotetsu study one of the miniature Mulligan drives in the hope they can work out how to track Kabuto. Or that’s what Shikamaru thinks he wants and he is offering. We would need to meet with Garner Parrod.”
Naruto twitched his whiskers. “You tell him that he gives us the drive or we do not tell him what we know. He will give us the drive or he will chase Kabuto to find out. Either way we win.”
Tayuya disliked Anko.
Anko disliked Tayuya.
The first day on Kisame’s ship, the Spear, they had started to fall into the habits they developed on the Silver Leaf. Tayuya’s mood deteriorated. Anko became overly critical. Tayuya said something. Anko was annoyed. Then Kisame had looked at them and pointed out, quietly, that he did not tolerate bad behaviour on his ship.
Anko now controlled her temper and Tayuya now held her tongue.
They were thankful that The Spear was larger than the Lancet and a great deal larger than the Snow Willow. It made avoiding each other just possible if they both worked at it.
Shikamaru almost missed it. He did not even know what had inspired him to look. He ran a comparison of hybrids’ genetic material: Kisame’s, Naruto’s Gaara’s and Kabuto’s mink-human hybrids. He concentrated on control sequences because Kabuto had said that it was the epigenetics that made the difference.
There were similarities between the mink-human hybrids and Gaara.
Shikamaru remembered Temari telling him about the scientist who had come to her father offering an army of hybrid fighters to tackle the slavers. He could not recall the scientist’s name.
Several searches later he had it.
Amachi.
Haku hated Kabuto.
Before Kabuto life had been good. Haku loved being a member of what outsiders would call a crew and what Naruto insisted was a family. He worked with Iruka-sensei to look after everyone. He had his crew room. He had some crewmates who were happier because Haku paid them special attention, like Inoichi, Kunugi and Tatsuji, and others who just needed the occasional fuck, like Gai and Choza. He had been helping Neji. Rin said he had potential as a therapist.
Then there had been Konohamaru and Kisame.
Haku was not sure what had been happening between him and Konohamaru. Unlike the others, Konohamaru did not need him; he and Kono-kun fucked purely for fun. Haku had thought he did not need Konohamaru, but he missed him when he was on the Lancet.
Becoming overly fond of Konohamaru was, Haku knew, unwise. The man Konohamaru would grow into would not choose someone like Haku as his partner. Kono-kun would want more. Haku saw the way he looked at Naruto; Haku was nowhere near as special as Naruto.
He understood his relationship with Kisame better. They shared history. Haku was proud of being the only person who had ever managed to tempt Kisame out of his self-imposed celibacy. They had fucked regularly since Kisame had come to the Oak.
Being with Kisame reminded Haku of the best parts of being with Zabuza.
No longer hindered by hero-worship, Haku had admitted that his relationship with Zabuza had been always been abusive. Kisame was a far better man than Zabuza. Kisame would never fuck a boy as young as Haku had been when he and Zabuza first met. Nor would he offer Haku to others in order to gain a place in a crew, or to settle a debt, or in a wager. Kisame was one of the kindest men Haku knew.
Haku had hoped that Itachi would slowly waste away in the tank, preferably taking many standards to do so, and that by the time he died Kisame’s loyalty would have transferred to Sasuke and his children. One day, perhaps, Kisame would be ready to acknowledge what Haku felt for him.
Instead Kisame could not look at Haku, never mind allow Haku to touch him. It was almost as if Kisame believed that fucking Haku had caused Itachi’s abduction. Haku found himself dreading Kisame being on the Oak between missions; it hurt so much when Kisame looked through him.
Haku hated Kabuto.
Garner Parrod was surprised that it was Naruto who kept the rendezvous at the club on Petersville. He looked about, expecting Sasuke, Shikamaru and Neji but there was only Naruto with the trio of Uchiha warriors, Hamaki, Terai and Fu.
“There will be no negotiation, Garner-san,” Naruto told him. “I will tell Klennethon Darrent about me in return for a miniature Mulligan drive of the type Kabuto is using. Your ship will do.”
Garner Parrod stared at the hybrid. His every instinct told him that what Naruto would tell him would be worth more than his ship. “My ship has an improver as well as a miniature Mulligan drive of the type you require,” he admitted.
Naruto’s whiskers twitched. He shrugged. “Your ship for the information,” he repeated.
Izumo was watching Kotetsu drool over the new Mulligan drive. The entire ship, the Dart, was gorgeous. The build quality was impeccable. He was astonished that Naruto had obtained such a beauty for one hologram and a few words.
“Shikamaru wants an answer about whether the drive can be tracked before we get back to the Oak,” he reminded Kotetsu.
Kotetsu’s eyes came back into focus. “There will be residual radiation at the hole,” he confirmed. “We may even be able to distinguish between individual drives. We may be able to build a detector if we have good enough data from the hole Kabuto used.”
Izumo hoped that the data they had collected was adequate. Shikamaru had been unconscious at the time, so it would depend on what decisions Shino-san had taken.
Klennethon Darrent was puzzled and more than a little irritated when he received the message explaining that Garner Parrod was making his way back via gated holes in a newly purchased yacht.
Then he decrypted the rest of the information. He started at the hologram of the design on the fox-human hybrid’s abdomen.
He had been in the presence of one of Bara’s hybrids.
The ship was a small price to pay.
Kabuto was pleased with the embryos’ progress. Twenty-three of the sixty-four still might develop into functional hybrids. For the time being, he had only frozen eight of the others and was allowing the other thirty-three to grown deformed; there was as much information to be gained from failure as success.
He had sent instructions forward when in a system with a suitable light-speed communication relay; the gestators would be prepped by the time he arrived.
Kisame’s fury still simmered beneath the surface, threatening to boil. He continued to put distance between himself and others. He had asked Kakashi to allow him to hack the light speed communication relays alone. When Kakashi would not allow it, Kisame had asked for females. He would never attack a female.
He was Itachi’s Companion, his bodyguard, yet Itachi had been stolen. Kisame should have been sleeping across the doorway of the side room where the tank was, not in a contented stupor in the crew room after Haku had ridden his prick.
It was not Haku’s fault. Haku was Haku.
Avoiding and ignoring Haku hurt the lad, Kisame knew that, but it was better than losing his temper and snapping Haku’s spine.
Each day he was on the Oak he would ask Shikamaru to see the diagram and Shikamaru would show him. It usually looked depressingly similar to the day before but occasionally there was a jump forward, like when Shikamaru incorporated the information from Klennethon Darrent and when he cross-referenced Kabuto to Amachi.
In time, six front-running locations emerged. Shikamaru investigated each. One yielded the name Orochimaru. Orochimaru had links to Amachi.
The system was Jewel.
Two of the scenes in this chapter are for nivell.
Apologies if the characters have grown differently in their new environment.
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.
70. Mosaic
Kabuto had lost twenty-one of his mink-human hybrids in the raid and another five opening the tissue bank. He terminated the remaining four and spaced the bodies; he had another twelve in cryogenic storage should he require them.
He considered activating a cat-human hybrid to fuck during the journey but decided against it. There was work he wished to do.
The woman had gifted him with a running start; there were stem cells from the hybrid in the tissue bank. Within a day he had sixty-four cloned zygotes. He would have liked more, a hundred or even five hundred, but he was too aware that the amount of original tissue was limited.
With his usual starting material he would be lucky to get one functional hybrid from sixty-four but these were stem cells from a Bara hybrid, so he was hoping for more.
Even with accelerated development, the embryos should not required transfer to gestators before he reached Jewel.
Dear Shikamaru-kun
Thank you for your unexpected, informative and enjoyable letter. I hope that it will prove to be the first of many. I look forward to hearing about your business venture when circumstances permit.
Your new sport of Snuffer hunting is intriguing. I would very much like to participate. Enclosed is a gift that may prove useful when identifying targets. You can be assured that I shall pay attention to any that prove persistently elusive.
I was distressed to hear about your problem with the scientist, Kabuto; a relevant gift is attached.
The miniature Mulligan drive is not unfamiliar to me; the technology is not mine but I know its source and I own a number of examples. May I suggest that you study the drive in detail to investigate whether it has a distinctive signature?
To do this you will require a drive of this type.
I am interested in what the scientist said about Naruto-san’s origins.
It would be possible for Garner-san to rendezvous with you to negotiate a deal. As your need is urgent, he is already on his way to a hub that I suspect is closer to your current location. His contact details are enclosed.
My regards to Sasuke-sama. I thought that he would appreciate this facsimile of a drawing in pastels by an artist I support.
Wishing you safe travelling
Your admirer
Klennethon Darrent.
Inari gave Gai-san a false but reassuring smile and prepared to hack the light speed communication relay in the gate through which they had just jumped. He could not get Kakashi-sensei’s voice out of his head.
“Neither Gai-san or Inoichi-san have taken to hacking, so it will be up to you. Get it wrong and not only will the journey be wasted but you will delay us finding Kabuto. Worst scenario, you will trigger the installation of better security. Shikamaru-san insists that you are more than capable of doing this. I am relying on you, Inari.”
He wished for a moment that Kakashi had taken the other option and swapped Kunugi and Inoichi, but both Neji and Haku had counselled against trapping Gai and Kunugi together on a ship as small as the Snow Willow.
He could do this. He could justify Kakashi-sensei’s faith in him. He took a deep breath and began.
Sasuke did not expect Shikamaru to turn up at his office with a hover platform. On the platform was a large display frame; Sasuke suspected it was from the dining hall. Shikamaru guided the hover platform to the wall opposite Sasuke’s desk and then lowered it to the floor. He propped up the frame.
“We can attach it to the wall later,” Shikamaru told him. “I recommend you sit down,” he added. Then he turned on the frame.
It was his Naruto. It looked like he was walking away and Sasuke had called his name. He could imagine the moment. Naruto would stop, begin to turn towards him and smile exactly like that.
Sasuke had never before appreciated that a drawing could be more real than a hologram.
“Klennethon Darrent sent it for you,” Shikamaru told him. “He also sent a packet of information to help us find Kabuto.” He took a deep breath. “He wants to negotiate another deal.”
Sasuke was distracted by the picture. Naruto was naked and the artist had used a medium that managed to convey the texture of his skin and the softness of his fur. The colours were glorious, like Naruto in sunlight.
“Sasuke-sama!” Shikamaru demanded.
“Sorry,” Sasuke admitted. “What did you say?”
Konohamaru was acutely aware that he had been placed with Dan and Kunugi, both of whom had outperformed him in the hacking simulations. He felt like a spare part, particularly as Dan and Kunugi were such close friends.
Even Tayuya had been better at the hacking.
He pulled himself together. It was good experience for him to be on a small ship like the Lancet. Spare parts were necessary; Dan or Kunugi could get ill or injured. Dan-san was careful to include him by giving him responsibilities; he could still perform well.
Also there was what Haku had told him, that Kunugi still carried a torch for Dan even though Dan preferred women and now was with Rin. Haku had also briefed Konohamaru on Kunugi’s likes, dislikes and fragilities.
Konohamaru sighed; he knew why Kakashi-san had put him, rather than Inari or Tayuya, with Dan and Kunugi.
Gaara viewed the communication Naruto had sent him and was angry.
This man, this Kabuto, had betrayed Gaara’s friends’ trust and stolen from them.
It was an odd sensation. He usually experienced anger for a fleeting moment before losing control. Gaara would have expected to be unconscious if he was wearing his controller or berserk if he were not.
He was not wearing his controller, he had not worn it since leaving the Oak, yet he was angry and not berserk.
Once his responsibilities were fulfilled, when the slavers had gone and Temari was leader, Gaara would help his friends hunt this Kabuto and reclaim what they had lost.
Naruto accompanied Shikamaru and Sasuke to Sasuke’s office after the midday meal; there was something heavy Shi-chan wanted to hang on the office wall. It turned out to be one of the large display frames from the dining room. Naruto did not ask for reasons, just lifted the frame onto the fixings and held it in place while Shi-chan made it fast.
He was, however, suspicious of the speed with which Shi-chan made his exit.
“Don’t you want to know what it is for, dobe?” Sasuke asked.
Naruto shrugged. “Shi-chan always has his reasons.”
Sasuke activated the frame.
It was him but not him. Did he look like that from behind? Naruto was not familiar with his back.
Then he smelt Sasuke and realised that Sasuke really liked the picture; Naruto was not sure if Sasuke could have the picture in his office if he liked it that much. Sasuke went to his office to work, not to think about fucking.
“Don’t you like it?” Sasuke asked.
Naruto’s whiskers twitched. “I would prefer a picture of you,” he admitted. “Are you sure it should be in your office?”
Sasuke smiled, which made Naruto’s insides flutter. “I have loaded some other images into the frame.” He flicked through a few attractive landscapes and returned to the picture of Naruto.
They had locked the door and were beginning to shed clothes when Naruto found himself studying the picture.
“How did Shi-chan make the picture?” he asked.
Sasuke was removing Naruto’s left boot. “He didn’t, dobe. It isn’t a camera image of you, it’s a camera image of a drawing. Someone drew a picture of you on paper using coloured sticks.”
Naruto stared. “Someone drew it?” he asked. “Who?”
“An artist called Kuroda,” Sasuke told him. “You can see his signature in the corner.”
“If this is an image, where is the drawing?”
Sasuke hesitated before replying. “Klennethon Darrent’s collection,”
Naruto jumped to his feet and snatched his boot from Sasuke’s hands. “Klennethon Darrent is looking at a drawing of me?”
“That was the deal, dobe. We let him image us and he gave the holograms to artists. One of the artists drew a picture of you. It’s a beautiful picture, almost a beautiful as you.”
“Being nice won’t work, teme,” Naruto warned him. “How did you get this image?”
“Klennethon Darrent sent it to Shikamaru with a letter. Shikamaru contacted him to help us find Kabuto.”
Naruto did not like the idea of Shi-chan contacting Klennethon Darrent. Klennethon Darrent was tricky; Naruto did not trust Klennethon Darrent.
“What does he want?” Naruto asked.
Sasuke bit his lower lip. “He wants to know what Kabuto told us about where you came from. In return he will let Shikamaru and Kotetsu study one of the miniature Mulligan drives in the hope they can work out how to track Kabuto. Or that’s what Shikamaru thinks he wants and he is offering. We would need to meet with Garner Parrod.”
Naruto twitched his whiskers. “You tell him that he gives us the drive or we do not tell him what we know. He will give us the drive or he will chase Kabuto to find out. Either way we win.”
Tayuya disliked Anko.
Anko disliked Tayuya.
The first day on Kisame’s ship, the Spear, they had started to fall into the habits they developed on the Silver Leaf. Tayuya’s mood deteriorated. Anko became overly critical. Tayuya said something. Anko was annoyed. Then Kisame had looked at them and pointed out, quietly, that he did not tolerate bad behaviour on his ship.
Anko now controlled her temper and Tayuya now held her tongue.
They were thankful that The Spear was larger than the Lancet and a great deal larger than the Snow Willow. It made avoiding each other just possible if they both worked at it.
Shikamaru almost missed it. He did not even know what had inspired him to look. He ran a comparison of hybrids’ genetic material: Kisame’s, Naruto’s Gaara’s and Kabuto’s mink-human hybrids. He concentrated on control sequences because Kabuto had said that it was the epigenetics that made the difference.
There were similarities between the mink-human hybrids and Gaara.
Shikamaru remembered Temari telling him about the scientist who had come to her father offering an army of hybrid fighters to tackle the slavers. He could not recall the scientist’s name.
Several searches later he had it.
Amachi.
Haku hated Kabuto.
Before Kabuto life had been good. Haku loved being a member of what outsiders would call a crew and what Naruto insisted was a family. He worked with Iruka-sensei to look after everyone. He had his crew room. He had some crewmates who were happier because Haku paid them special attention, like Inoichi, Kunugi and Tatsuji, and others who just needed the occasional fuck, like Gai and Choza. He had been helping Neji. Rin said he had potential as a therapist.
Then there had been Konohamaru and Kisame.
Haku was not sure what had been happening between him and Konohamaru. Unlike the others, Konohamaru did not need him; he and Kono-kun fucked purely for fun. Haku had thought he did not need Konohamaru, but he missed him when he was on the Lancet.
Becoming overly fond of Konohamaru was, Haku knew, unwise. The man Konohamaru would grow into would not choose someone like Haku as his partner. Kono-kun would want more. Haku saw the way he looked at Naruto; Haku was nowhere near as special as Naruto.
He understood his relationship with Kisame better. They shared history. Haku was proud of being the only person who had ever managed to tempt Kisame out of his self-imposed celibacy. They had fucked regularly since Kisame had come to the Oak.
Being with Kisame reminded Haku of the best parts of being with Zabuza.
No longer hindered by hero-worship, Haku had admitted that his relationship with Zabuza had been always been abusive. Kisame was a far better man than Zabuza. Kisame would never fuck a boy as young as Haku had been when he and Zabuza first met. Nor would he offer Haku to others in order to gain a place in a crew, or to settle a debt, or in a wager. Kisame was one of the kindest men Haku knew.
Haku had hoped that Itachi would slowly waste away in the tank, preferably taking many standards to do so, and that by the time he died Kisame’s loyalty would have transferred to Sasuke and his children. One day, perhaps, Kisame would be ready to acknowledge what Haku felt for him.
Instead Kisame could not look at Haku, never mind allow Haku to touch him. It was almost as if Kisame believed that fucking Haku had caused Itachi’s abduction. Haku found himself dreading Kisame being on the Oak between missions; it hurt so much when Kisame looked through him.
Haku hated Kabuto.
Garner Parrod was surprised that it was Naruto who kept the rendezvous at the club on Petersville. He looked about, expecting Sasuke, Shikamaru and Neji but there was only Naruto with the trio of Uchiha warriors, Hamaki, Terai and Fu.
“There will be no negotiation, Garner-san,” Naruto told him. “I will tell Klennethon Darrent about me in return for a miniature Mulligan drive of the type Kabuto is using. Your ship will do.”
Garner Parrod stared at the hybrid. His every instinct told him that what Naruto would tell him would be worth more than his ship. “My ship has an improver as well as a miniature Mulligan drive of the type you require,” he admitted.
Naruto’s whiskers twitched. He shrugged. “Your ship for the information,” he repeated.
Izumo was watching Kotetsu drool over the new Mulligan drive. The entire ship, the Dart, was gorgeous. The build quality was impeccable. He was astonished that Naruto had obtained such a beauty for one hologram and a few words.
“Shikamaru wants an answer about whether the drive can be tracked before we get back to the Oak,” he reminded Kotetsu.
Kotetsu’s eyes came back into focus. “There will be residual radiation at the hole,” he confirmed. “We may even be able to distinguish between individual drives. We may be able to build a detector if we have good enough data from the hole Kabuto used.”
Izumo hoped that the data they had collected was adequate. Shikamaru had been unconscious at the time, so it would depend on what decisions Shino-san had taken.
Klennethon Darrent was puzzled and more than a little irritated when he received the message explaining that Garner Parrod was making his way back via gated holes in a newly purchased yacht.
Then he decrypted the rest of the information. He started at the hologram of the design on the fox-human hybrid’s abdomen.
He had been in the presence of one of Bara’s hybrids.
The ship was a small price to pay.
Kabuto was pleased with the embryos’ progress. Twenty-three of the sixty-four still might develop into functional hybrids. For the time being, he had only frozen eight of the others and was allowing the other thirty-three to grown deformed; there was as much information to be gained from failure as success.
He had sent instructions forward when in a system with a suitable light-speed communication relay; the gestators would be prepped by the time he arrived.
Kisame’s fury still simmered beneath the surface, threatening to boil. He continued to put distance between himself and others. He had asked Kakashi to allow him to hack the light speed communication relays alone. When Kakashi would not allow it, Kisame had asked for females. He would never attack a female.
He was Itachi’s Companion, his bodyguard, yet Itachi had been stolen. Kisame should have been sleeping across the doorway of the side room where the tank was, not in a contented stupor in the crew room after Haku had ridden his prick.
It was not Haku’s fault. Haku was Haku.
Avoiding and ignoring Haku hurt the lad, Kisame knew that, but it was better than losing his temper and snapping Haku’s spine.
Each day he was on the Oak he would ask Shikamaru to see the diagram and Shikamaru would show him. It usually looked depressingly similar to the day before but occasionally there was a jump forward, like when Shikamaru incorporated the information from Klennethon Darrent and when he cross-referenced Kabuto to Amachi.
In time, six front-running locations emerged. Shikamaru investigated each. One yielded the name Orochimaru. Orochimaru had links to Amachi.
The system was Jewel.