In the cold of space you find the heat of suns

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.

9. Rivals

Once everyone had recovered from what had become That Meeting, they settled into a routine. Naruto’s controller was replaced with a simpler version that Shikamaru had designed and built. Each crew member, including Naruto himself, was given an activator to use if Naruto went berserk. Shikamaru kept working on a more sophisticated version that would work automatically and painlessly. Naruto was outstanding at the fucking part of the cat’s role, with the exception of blow jobs. Sasuke continued to be terrible at the fucking part, also with the exception of blow jobs. Naruto was improving dramatically at everything that did not rely on a thorough education. Sasuke was excellent at everything that did not include fucking.

It was a restful five divisions, only punctuated by the party to mark Naruto officially becoming cat and the occasional drop.

Then Kakashi decided it was time to begin teaching them to fight.



The Silver Leaf was unusual in that it had a large gym. It had started out as a pressurised cargo hold, but as the Silver Leaf currently specialised in small, high priced items the space was rarely required. Kakashi had converted it from a cargo hold occasionally used for exercise into a gym used occasionally for cargo. Everyone knew that Kakashi started by testing cats out and everyone but the Captain had managed to arrange their duties to be there. Even Tsunade was watching via the monitor.

Noone was surprised that Sasuke knew what he was doing. Shikamaru speculated that he had begun martial arts training as soon as he could walk and noone disagreed. However Kakashi was taller, stronger and much more experienced, so Sasuke lost. Repeatedly. He took it well.

Naruto was a shock to everyone. He had happily announced that Ibiki was responsible for the activator during the fight but that it wouldn’t be needed because the fox part of him thought of Kakashi as an alpha. Everyone heard Kakashi tell Naruto to give it everything he had. Naruto asked if that included biting, scratching and gouging. Kakashi smiled and said that he was welcome to try. The fight lasted until Iruka insisted they stop. They were both panting and Kakashi’s skin was peppered with scratches, with occasional teeth marks. Naruto was inhumanly fast and, no matter how he was thrown, he always ended up on his feet facing in the best direction.

Naruto bounced about singing about being good at fighting as well as fucking.

Kakashi was delighted and kept saying so.

Sasuke was jealous and tried to hide it.

Naruto took a while to realise that Sasuke’s bad mood wasn’t an intense form of his usual grumpiness. Once he worked that out he looked for patterns. It was worse after Naruto had his one-to-one training sessions with Kakashi. The day that Kakashi banned him from sparring with Sasuke, because Naruto was too fast and too strong, had sparked actual avoidance, with monosyllabic answers to Naruto’s questions when duties forced them together.

“I don’t get it.” Naruto complained to Shikamaru. “I’m only good at two things. He’s good at hundreds of things. Why does he have act weird about one of my two things?”

Shikamaru struggled with Naruto’s ability to multitask while fucking. He heard what Naturo was saying, but as the fox-boy was riding him to a climax he had other things on his mind. Once it was over Naruto popped Shikamaru’s prick from his arse and moved up to straddle his stomach. “Do you remember what I said?” he asked.

The amazing thing was that Shikamaru did. It was one of the peculiarities of the way his brain worked. “It isn’t the fighting, Foxy. Of course you are going to be a better fighter than him. It’s in your genes, just like his genes make him cleverer than you. It’s Kakashi.” Shikamaru struggled to find words that wouldn’t get him or Naruto killed. “He admires Kakashi and, suddenly, Kakashi is more interested in you than him.”

Naruto thought about it and decided that Shikamaru could be right. It fitted. He tried calling Kakashi sensei and noted the tiny hitch in Sasuke’s breathing. Naruto thought about talking about it to Sasuke but Sasuke would get upset, which was bad. He considered talking to Kakashi but Kakashi was likely to pretend not to hear. He decided to talk to Iruka instead, Iruka had ways of forcing Kakashi to listen. He waited until he and Iruka were sorting out the closet.

“Iruka-sensei, please get Kakashi-sensei to stop training me,” he began.

Iruka stopped folding and stared at him. “Naruto?”

Naruto felt his face flushing. “Sasuke… Sasuke and I were getting on. Now he’s avoiding me. Shikamaru thinks it’s because Kakashi has forgotten him and is interested in me instead.”

“You shouldn’t listen to Shikamaru.” Iruka murmured automatically. “Kakashi would never lose interest in Sasuke. Naruto, crews need fighters to protect them. That’s now spacing works. You are going to be a great fighter. You could help Kakashi protect this crew. To do that you need to train and only Kakashi is a good enough fighter to train you.”

Naruto liked the idea of protecting his crew. It made him want to train more. “But Sasuke…”

“I will think on it.” Iruka promised.

Four days later Naruto found himself sitting with Sasuke in the crew room instead of performing his usual duties. Iruka was fiddling with the controls for the wall display. He smelt stressed. Finally he managed to make the display obey him and two columns appeared, one orange and one blue. To the left of the blue column and to the right of the orange column there were symbols with numbers next to them. The blue column was taller than the orange column but neither of them went more than a third up the display.

“I have decided that, with two cats, we need to introduce a performance tracker.” Iruka began. “Naruto, you are orange and Sasuke you are blue.” He tossed an earpiece and pointer to each cat and disappeared into the galley.

Naruto discovered that you pointed at the symbol and the earpiece told you what it stood for. They were skills you needed to do to be a good cat or were useful for the future. His pointer was over ‘cleaning’ and after announcing Naruto’s overall score, it started telling him how Iruka had worked it out. Naruto glanced across at Sasuke, whose eyes were fixed on the display. He was scowling. Naruto tried pointing at one of Sasuke’s scores but there was no voice in his earpiece.

“Stay on your own side, dobe.” Sasuke growled.

Naruto froze. Sasuke had never called him stupid before. His hands tightened into fists, but then a small thought crept into his mind. Sasuke was insulting him. He had never heard Sasuke insult anyone. It meant something. Iruka’s performance thingy had made Sasuke think about him differently. Naruto stared at the display while another thought slowly formed and grew. Iruka was comparing him to Sasuke and he was, Naruto sized up the two columns, half as good. Naruto decided to take a risk. “As if Iruka would let me hear your stuff, teme.”

Sasuke eyes widened, then there was the slightest suggestion of a smile. “Dobe.”

“Teme.”

Sasuke’s eyes went back to the display. “I have a higher fighting score than you,” he observed.

“What!” Naruto’s gaze flickered between the two scores.

“Kakashi said that we should measure current performance against potential maximum.” Iruka told them, bearing a tray with two hot drinks and a plate of biscuits.

“You didn’t do that for the sex-stuff.” Naruto grumbled. “Or Sasuke would have full marks.”

Sasuke took a moment to realise how thoroughly he had been insulted. His eyes searched the orange side of the screen. “At least I don’t have any zeros. Dobe.”

“But I’m not allowed in the Control Room or the Engine Room!” Naruto complained.

“You need to ask Shikamaru about simulators, Naruto,” Iruka told him. “Sasuke probably used them before he joined as cat.”

Sasuke smirked.

“You could have told me,” Naruto seethed. “Teme!”

Kakashi took time to accept that a simple scoring system, created within four days by an uneducated Fringer, could have more effect than batallions of tutors or centuries of tradition. Having the fox-boy on his heels was exactly what Sasuke had needed. He was finally trying.

And Naruto made a better rival than anyone could have anticipated. There provided to be little he could not do when he put his mind to it. As well as addressing his deficiencies, Naruto was determined to exceed Sasuke’s fighting score. Kakashi even had to resort to activating his implant occasionally, despite Iruka’s scolding.

As for the fox-boy’s choice of insult, it was exquisite. He was calling a son of the Uchiha family a bastard and Sasuke was letting him. The first time Kakashi heard it he moved to hit the boy but Sasuke’s hand on his arm stopped him. The look on Jiraiya’s face was priceless. Even Tsunade paled before her lips twitched into a smile.

Three divisions later Sasuke’s column was approaching the top of the display and Narutos was three-quarters as good as compared to half. Iruka was panicking. The others sympathised. Iruka’s ‘performance thingy’, as Naruto called it, had improved life for everyone.

“Are the scores actually out of anything?” Jiraiya asked one morning as Iruka was estimating how long it would be before Sasuke topped out.

Iruka frowned. “No. I started thinking about them being out of one hundred but I decided it was wrong to imply that there was a limit to excellence.”

Jiraiya smiled evily. “Change the scale.”

Naruto howled with frustration when he saw that his column was only one-quarter up the display. Sasuke was absolutely still. On the new scale, the difference between the height of the two columns barely showed.