Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Plato of Your Kind	By : Ljiljana Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1232 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: NARUTO does not belong to me; I make no money writing this story.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Part Three

Those Clouds, When They Announce a Storm

To keep himself awake, Naruto turned the television on. He kept the volume low, even though the walls of the apartment were thick and there was no way he’d wake up Sasuke, who was sleeping in his bedroom. For the last four hours, Naruto had been trying to think up what he should do. He had protected people whose lives were in danger before but he had never been so alone in doing it. There had always been Jiraiya and the secure safe haven of the agency and the mass of its employees. Now, Naruto did have a few people he could ask for help… And those were the same people he could have asked for help if Jiraiya went to the hospital, only this was different. This wouldn’t be begging for money and he knew that he would be able to repay them later.

The best way was to find the Shelter first and ask Iruka how to get in contact with Kakashi, and then he could make Kakashi find Itachi and see what was going on. Depending on if Itachi was still alive, he would make further plans. Naruto had promised he’d protect Sasuke and he had every intention of keeping his word. He just had no idea how to do that, exactly.

Yet.

Sometime around dawn, Naruto finally stumbled on the news on some channel. He was He only watched half-heartedly until a familiar face popped up. Stunned, Naruto tuned it up and watched with his eyes wide.

The news was saying that the police was suspecting and looking for Sasuke Uchiha, age 22 – younger brother of the owner of a well-known chain of clubs with a shady background – for setting off two bombs in his neighborhood and killing a police officer in his apartment! They showed Sasuke’s picture and then a snapshot of Naruto’s head, the one from the fake ID he had in the wallet he had forgotten at Sasuke’s place. He was not a suspect, but the police suspected, as the reporter said, that he might be a victim or a hostage.

Sasuke hadn’t killed anyone. And the guy Naruto had been shooting at was an assassin, not a police officer. But people who were after Itachi were obviously well-connected in the city. Sasuke – and Naruto was in a hell of a lot of trouble, God only knew why.

They had to move. Naruto had left his fingerprints all over the duct tape he had used to tie that guy with; it was a matter of time until the police would have his identity. They’d come right to his apartment then, and Naruto had to take Sasuke away until he managed to figure out what the hell happened and how to fix it.

He almost ran across the room to the bedroom.

“Sasuke!” He yelled, opening the door. “We have to go!”

The way Sasuke shot up had to hurt, it was so fast. Naruto blinked at his figure in the dark, grabbing for clothes. He had exaggerated the hurry a little, it seemed.

“Er. I mean, get ready. We were on TV.”

Sasuke froze for a moment before reaching to turn on the lamp. The light, blue-gray from the lampshade, illuminated his face, half-turned in the other direction just well enough for Naruto to see anger in his eyes.

“So it was the police,” Sasuke said, in a voice rough from sleep. Busy wondering if he was planning to put something over his sleeveless shirt that wasn’t covering much and when exactly, Naruto had no idea what he meant for a second.

“Yeah,” he said, only to realize again how fucked up it all was. The police couldn’t have gotten to Sasuke’s apartment at such short notice, finish the crime scene processing and wrap everything up. “No. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Sasuke said, his voice a tense cord on the edge of snapping. “You said my apartment was secured as a crime scene. And now I am on television.”

“If it was the police, they would’ve had someone in the hallway; people would be walking in and out of your place. There was no one there!” It wasn’t doing any good; Sasuke was just watching him with angry, hard eyes. “Just get dressed. We have to go.”

“’We’ don’t have to do anything,” Sasuke finally snapped. “I made a mistake. I will now go to the police, as I should have done in the first place.”

“Yeah, well,” Naruto said, picking up the long sleeved shirt Sasuke had folded on the nightstand and throwing it to him. “Sure, if you want to end up in prison forever. You are a wanted criminal now.”

Sasuke caught the shirt and said while dressing, “I haven’t done anything. I will explain what happened. And you will come with me to confirm it. Then you can get as fucking far away from me as possible and stay there.”

That hurt like shit, but Naruto caught himself in time, just before calling Sasuke a very ugly name. Instead, he gritted out, “They said that you killed a cop in your apartment, set off bombs in your neighborhood and probably took me hostage.”

“What?”

“So take what you need with you, I know someone with connections everywhere and we have to find him, preferably before I become a wanted criminal as well.”

It would be awfully hard to move around the city if they kept showing Sasuke’s wanted warrants every hour in the news. Not too many people watch television in the neighborhood Naruto was heading for, but you never know.

“You were the one who killed him.”

Sasuke had put on old jacket that once belonged to Naruto’s father and had hung in the closet for years and put the gun in a pocket. Naruto, who hadn’t been able to bear the thought of either wearing it or giving it away for years, felt oddly undisturbed by the sight.

He was getting very annoyed, though. Sasuke should have his mouth taped shut or something.

“He wasn’t dead. And he was not a fucking cop - he unlocked your door, searched the apartment room by room without announcing himself in any way and had a silencer on his gun! That is not a normal police officer behavior by any standards!”

On the other hand, his weapon was 9mm Beretta… But just because that was used by police, it didn’t mean no one else used that type.

Sasuke stepped closer to the door. “What if he was incompetent? It was an accident, we can explain that. Do you have the license for doing security?”

Naruto ignored the question, because Sasuke just wasn’t listening. It was like he was talking to a wall. “He wasn’t dead. We stopped the bleeding and the wound was on his arm, where there are no internal organs. I did not kill that guy and if he was a cop - which he was not – that would mean that who ever has it against you will not be satisfied to just send you to jail. They want you so dead, that your brother would be happy if he could find your bare bones to bury.”

Naruto realized that his rant was maybe a little bit too descriptive when Sasuke glanced back at him. They were in the hall, close to the front door already. The light was weak, but enough to see how pale Sasuke’s face was.

“But they can’t just announce that a cop is dead,” he said, ignoring the apologetic look Naruto gave him. “Reporters would be asking for the name, digging up thing for ‘in memoriam’ specials.”

“Well…” Naruto said, picking up things he had packed earlier. “Then they killed a cop and put his corpse in your apartment.”

“Or that guy was a cop.”

Naruto growled, letting go of the shoelaces he was trying to tie to glare up at Sasuke. “Damn it, Sasuke, he wasn’t a…”

“Think.” Sasuke interrupted. “There are different units in the police; he could have been some kind of special force or something. On a mission. Why would someone drag a real cop and take unnecessary risks when they already had a wounded man sitting there and waiting to be a sacrifice? It doesn’t make any sense.”

No, it really wasn’t making any sense. “It makes sense if a cop walked in on him and he and his buddies killed him – removing the witness and making sure you are in shit up to your nose.”

“Stop making up things.” Sasuke said, sharply but… calmer, somehow. “People don’t make it to the news in a matter of hours as wanted for killing and setting off bombs just because a dead cop was found in their apartment.” That rather depend on the last name in some cases, Naruto had the time to think before Sasuke continued. “They have no reason to think I did anything. They have no weapon, no witnesses, no evidence. Or at least, not real evidence.”

“I’m not stupid.” Naruto growled. “I know what you are getting at, but I won’t believe the police set you up – why would they do that?”

“To get to Itachi.” Sasuke tested.

“To get to the brother you are not speaking with and have no idea where he is, they will make you spend your life in prison by killing one of their own men,” Naruto voiced incredulously. The truth was… he could see it. They didn’t have to actually kill anyone, just say that they were dead. If Itachi really was that important to the police, he could imagine that they had decided to take unorthodox steps and make sure Sasuke was in so much trouble, Itachi had to show interest and expose himself. But that didn’t explain why Naruto’s team had been wiped out. “Not to mention the people working with me. Isn’t that a bit too much?”

“Not if they are not really dead. If it were all staged,” Sasuke said, without much hope. They were straying into uncertainties now, arguing hypothetical situations. Thinking that no one was actually dead was just wishful thinking, and Naruto didn’t even have to look up at Sasuke to know that he didn’t believe it, either. But he looked up anyway, which caused Sasuke to snap again. “Do you need help with those shoelaces?”

Naruto had been distracted by talking and listening, and Sasuke had a point, he was slow… But the guy was such a fucking bastard. Very unprofessionally, Naruto snapped, “Oh, fuck off,” and finished the job quickly. At some point, Sasuke had put on an older pair of Naruto’s shoes. Naruto didn’t see exactly when that happened, so he might have been sleeping in them after walking around as good as barefoot outside in the cold earlier that evening.

Naruto stood up and checked on the security system, just like he did every time he was heading out. It was a four-monitor surveillance system with a channel control; it was working perfectly, showing relatively clear pictures of all the key spots in and outside of the building. It was all clean, as it should be at that hour. The hallways were empty, all the rooms showed on the tiny screens… It was too empty, Naruto thought, edgy. Rationally it should be, but something was setting off his inner alarms, so he kept looking for several more seconds, before he saw it.

The porter was not in his stall. It was a small thing; the guy could be in the bathroom or out, taking a break… But it was too cold. If he was, he’d soon be running back to the comfortable little room that looked out at the lobby through a huge window, where the heater was still on.

“Are we going?” Sasuke asked.

Naruto shook his head once and waited, staring at four little screens alternately. After several long minutes of ignoring Sasuke’s impatience and the way he was leaning to look for himself, a movement on a different screen caught Naruto’s eye - the screen that was showing the floor his apartment was in. A moment later, two men with heavy equipment silently crossed the hallway, weapons in their hands. Their appearance reminded Naruto forcefully of the guy they left behind at Sasuke’s.

Naruto grabbed Sasuke’s arm. He whispered, “We’ll be using the shortcut after all.”

Sasuke glanced behind them, where the hall became the living room, as if he was expecting those people to teleport there. He nodded, so Naruto turned to the kitchen.

He let his backpack slide down the remodeled garbage opening first and motioned for Sasuke to go next. He got an incredulous look in response, so Naruto grabbed his arm and pushed him to hurry. It was bad, he had to send Sasuke first even though he couldn’t be sure that that the landing place – behind the building, near the building’s dumpster – was as clean as it was while he was looking at the screens. But he knew that there was a danger from this side, so it was the best he could manage.

Sasuke wasn’t complaining any longer. He quickly climbed and let himself slide in with one last glance at Naruto and the apartment. Naruto had to wait a little so he wouldn’t end up on top of Sasuke’s head… But he could clearly hear the door being broken in. He waited as long as he could, but the first thing that entered after the heavy wood busted open was a hand grenade.

Naruto let himself slide down the shaft. The ride was fast, the descent was sharp and he was blinded for a moment, trying to find the ground with his feet before he was ready for it. Still disoriented, Naruto wasn’t completely sure if the bomb went off already - or even if the filling in the grenade was explosive and not chemical - but he grabbed Sasuke, who was picking up his backpack and pushed him to the ground.

As if in direct response, the explosion sent a wave of shattered glass over them. Explosive after all. For a single hand grenade, that was too fucking much, Naruto was thinking. At the same time, he was trying to make Sasuke stop moving and let himself be protected. Naruto was fully on top of him, acting as a shield.

It surprised him when he felt Sasuke’s arms moved up… and cross over his head. Naruto had used his body many times to protect people before, but never someone had tried to protect him in turn. It almost made him smile.

Still warm from the thought, Naruto automatically moved upward as soon as the glass stopped falling on them. He wasn’t hurt. From the look of it, neither was Sasuke. It was dumb luck, nothing else. Naruto pulled him up, not missing it when Sasuke gave him a mirroring, searching look.

There was no one in the alley but them. It made sense; that was why the exit had lead there. No back door on that side of the building meant no signs of precaution from those invading.

The next building had a basement looking that way, so Naruto broke the glass and they walked though it. Naruto knew the neighborhood very well, all the buildings nearby; it was easy to slip, with Sasuke close by, though familiar hallways and alleys. They stopped after a good fifteen minutes, just under the open flight of stairs that lead to a lower level, closer to the water channel. There were some trees around, but it wasn’t a real park. It was a place people came to learn how to ride a bike, that sort of thing. On the higher lever, there was a lot of open space.

“You okay?” Naruto asked when he got his voice back. Sasuke was leaning on the concrete wall that surrounded the stairs, hands in his pockets. He seemed to have caught his breath quicker than Naruto, which, even though a little annoying, was also a good thing. At least Naruto wouldn’t have to drag him around.

“Fine. Now what?”

As an answer of sorts, Naruto took out one of the cell phones from the pocket of the backpack he brought along, and paper and pen. The thing was completely clean, as if just out of the factory. All the important numbers were in Naruto’s head. He dialed up the phone booth in an alley away from the biggest city shelter for homeless people. It rang until the connection broke and no one picked it up.

“Who are you calling?” Sasuke asked.

“I just need some information,” Naruto answered, dialing the same number again. Someone fortunately picked up this time.

“Hallo? Who’s there?” The voice said, sounding old and slurred. Some drunk, no doubt. Even with the shelter so close, some people preferred to sleep outside. There was always someone - the reporters, private detectives, cops; they were always looking for someone, or something, and so the shelters, while offering beds and food, allowed no discretion. But behind the large kitchens there were always good spots to find some rest, it was warm and you could always some food in the trash.

“Good morning!” Naruto said, feigning cheerfulness for kicks. “Could you please read me the numbers that are written in red on the right side from the phone?”

“Who’s there? Are you messing with me?”

Yeah, like I would tell you if I was, Naruto thought. “I wrote there a number of a girl I want to take out on a date,” he explained. “I didn’t have any paper when she gave it to me. Please, sir, could you just read it? It’s really important.”

The man on the other side didn’t answer, but he didn’t hang up, either. Naruto’s eyes darted from Sasuke to the top of the stairs and back. Sasuke was watching him carefully, with some amusement.

“On the right?” The man on the other side muttered.

“Yeah. Please?” Naruto repeated. Some luck was with him after all, the man read the numbers and Naruto wrote them down. He cut off the connection. It was in the simplest of all codes, letters were replaced with the corresponding number in the alphabet. The only slightly tricky thing was to determine if one or two numbers made a letter, because they were just listed, without any interruption between them.

Naruto was on the forth or fifth letter, when Sasuke – who leaned over his shoulder to see – read an address aloud. “Where is that?”

“No idea.” Naruto answered, and continued to count, as Sasuke took the phone out of his hands. It wasn’t exactly that he didn’t think Sasuke would be able to find it before him; he just wanted to be sure. But the numbers matched up, leaving the two last ones to mark the house. Or building, whatever.

In the meantime, Sasuke had called information service. He asked for the street they had decoded and someone on the other side explained to him where it was. Naruto waited, thinking back when he had to take Jiraiya’s place and watch over the old Mayor’s grandson, Konohamaru. For some reason, people tended to be very passive once they allowed themselves into the hands of a bodyguard. It was as if they could just turn their brains off. When they were not actively doing everything exactly opposite from what Naruto thought they should, then they were walking dolls.

Maybe because Naruto had been on Konohamaru’s tail for many months, it was easy work. Konohamaru seemed to feel guilty for being the target – there was a leaked rumor that he would be kidnapped so his grandfather would sign something – so even though he refused to change his - for someone his age very inappropriate - lifestyle, Konohamaru had done all that was possible to actively help Naruto. He had offered information without being prompted and went along with Naruto’s crazy ideas of alternative entrances to the places he insisted on going to. He took it all as one big adventure.

What Sasuke was doing now was actively taking over. No one Naruto was protecting ever did that. The easiest of them, like Konohamaru, would maybe – maybe – ask if they should ask for information, looking for the assurance that the phone was safe, or that calling the information service was a good idea. Sasuke was calling without consulting Naruto, and Naruto was pretty sure that it wasn’t because he was being an ass, but because he knew that the phone was as safe as possible and the service was a place where thousands of calls arrived each hour.

It was making Naruto feel a little bit better about the situation. At least he was not with a useless marionette. That way, if his constant fear of forgetting something of vital importance came true, then maybe Sasuke would catch it before it was too late.

It felt almost – not quite, but almost – like team work.

On the empty street at the top of the staircase, two cars stopped suddenly from a great speed. The cry of the tires was startlingly loud. Naruto grabbed Sasuke’s arm and pushed him behind the supporting stone wall at the bottom of the stairs. He took his gun out.

A few steps up were enough to confirm it. Those people from Naruto’s apartment had found them. Somehow, they knew exactly where Naruto and Sasuke were. One of them – the leader, judging by the formation – was silently ordering with unfamiliar hand signs.

The only way that was possible, after the chain of basements and halls of the buildings, was if one or both of them had a tracker on them. Which should be impossible, but it was all Naruto could think off.

He stepped back slowly. Warm hands touched his back, so he whispered. “The channel.”

Making no fuss, Sasuke followed him, trying to keep his steps light. They left the backpack behind.

People on the level above them dropped the attempt of the stealthy mission as soon as they noticed that Naruto and Sasuke had started to move. The attempt had been a joke anyway, after getting there in such a noisy manner. There were no warnings when the fire descended on the narrow bicycle track that followed the line of the water; they were aiming to kill.

The only cover available was a mobile food stand, parked at the edge. Naruto took Sasuke’s sleeve to tug him that way, but it was an unnecessary effort. Sasuke was heading that way already.

“Was it the phone?” he asked, letting Naruto push him back a bit to peek over the food stand.

“I have no idea,” Naruto told him with complete honesty, as he aimed at the guy who managed to get down the stairs first and peeked from behind the wall and shot. The distance was too great for him to hit a part of an arm, but the bullet ended up close enough for the guy to retreat some.

“You can swim, right?” Naruto asked in a whisper.

“There’s a bridge just over there,” Sasuke answered.

The water was better. There were no lights, and if those trackers were somewhere in their – and that meant Naruto’s – clothes, water should ruin them.

“Can you?” Naruto asked, pressing the trigger again, with the same results.

“It’s not deep enough for swimming,” Sasuke said, instead of answering. Well, then it didn’t matter.

Across the path, several people jumped off the higher level.

Naruto nodded to Sasuke’s hands, where he was holding his berretta. “Use that. Keep them distracted.”

At least Sasuke wasn’t hesitating about that. He shifted closer and mimicked the way Naruto had been crouching until then. Without hesitation, Sasuke used his gun. Naruto was pretty sure he was actually aiming on hitting those people, not distracting them. If so, then he wasn’t the world’s greatest shooter.

Naruto lay down on the ground on his stomach. He crawled forward a little ways under the stand, until he could see just enough to aim. His shots were precise and each hit a knee Naruto was aiming for. They would leave serious consequences, but he was beyond caring.

When all of the people with identical black clothing on the narrow path were down – and not one was yelling in pain, which was just so fucking creepy – Naruto pulled himself back and up.

“Come on,” he ordered. Sasuke followed.

They used the cover the food stand provided for as long as possible. A couple of hits whistled through the air – whoever these guys were, they were not about to be stopped in killing their targets because of some destroyed knees.

But they couldn’t walk, so when Naruto and Sasuke were half way across the water, the shooting stopped completely. Sasuke was right, the channel was shallow.

Naruto crouched, ignoring the smell, until his hair was wet.

“That water is dirty,” Sasuke said in an odd, strained voice.

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid we don’t have a shower handy. If they are tracking us somehow…”

Sasuke hesitated for a moment longer. “It’s dirty,” he repeated.

“You wanna be dirty or you wanna be dead?” Naruto said, putting his gun back on his belt. There was no response, they had no time for convincing, so Naruto grabbed his shoulders and pushed him down into the water.

The angry hiss Sasuke let out sounded like Naruto was too harsh, but he went along with it. Sasuke stood up more quickly than Naruto thought possible. He grabbed at his wet shirt and lifted it from his stomach, more on the right side. Naruto had to strain his eyes to see in the dark. Sasuke lifted his shirt completely, so soon it became clear.

He was wounded.

“The fuck, Sasuke,” Naruto muttered, reaching out.

Sasuke’s shirt was ripped. It didn’t look like it was a hole, just a rip, so Naruto took some hope from it that it wasn’t a bullet. He wiped as much blood and dirty water off as he could, trying to keep his hands steady and gentle.

“You cut yourself?” He asked.

Sasuke shook his head. He was looking down at what Naruto was doing. Naruto was tracking the wound, it was a long slash just above Sasuke’s hip.

“It’s just a scratch,” Naruto said. They had nothing, nothing to stop the bleeding. “But it’s bleeding a lot. You should’ve had told me before I made you wash it in the fucking channel!”

“Would that have made any difference? You obviously think that they have a way of tracking us down.”

“Yes, it would’ve made a difference,” Naruto seethed. There was very little he could do. “We’d have it covered or something. Too late now, so let’s go.”

He didn’t ask if Sasuke could move, but he was watching him carefully. Even though obviously in pain, Sasuke started walking toward the other riverbank first. Naruto wanted to ask when it happened, why that – that moron didn’t say anything, but they’d already gotten held up long enough.

Wet and slow, they got out of the water on the other side. Naruto was unfamiliar with this part of the city, but he led the way through the pitiful parks of the building blocks, tying to stay out of the light as much as possible. About five minutes later, he saw washed clothes drying on a terrace of the first floor. They were all women’s clothes, but Naruto climbed and grabbed what he could reach. It was a red little shirt and cotton shorts, luckily dry already.

Sasuke looked incomprehensibly at him when Naruto offered them. Under the surge of adrenalin, Naruto had barely felt the cold fall air around him, but Sasuke was shaking. He was still bleeding a lot, even though not a word of complain had left his mouth.

“Come on,” Naruto said softly. Sasuke shrugged off his hand when Naruto tried to direct him to the edge of the building and moved in that direction without help. They stopped next to a couple of steps, near the parking lot entrance. “Sit here.”

Sasuke looked at him darkly, but sat. Naruto kneeled in front of him – a bit on the side, so he wouldn’t block a faint light from a night light in front of the garage.

Sasuke was holding his wet shirt away from the wound. Naruto pushed it higher, not missing the shiver that passed through Sasuke when his wet skin came in contact with cold wind. There was a lot of blood, oozing out of the wound and smearing Sasuke’s entire stomach, all the way down through his pants.

“Christ,” Naruto whispered. He cleaned as much as he could of the bloody mess with the smaller cloth. The wound was still bleeding, so he ripped the shirt to make a long strip and pressed the smaller rag to the wound and bandaged it to the best of his abilities. Even though he had to brush over it, touch and even press the bleeding injury, Sasuke hadn’t made a sound. “I had painkillers in that backpack.”

Sasuke nodded, like it actually mattered now. “I need to clean it soon.”

Naruto let his hand fall from where he was fastening the knot. “I know. I wanted to be sure we got rid of whatever is that they had on us first…”because Iruka didn’t deserve Naruto knocking on his door only to bring the chaos and ruin all the hard work. Naruto would prefer to wait and make sure, but he had forced Sasuke into the dirty water, even though all the people had been incapacitated. He would become dizzy soon, after losing so much blood and he was in pain. “But we better hurry.”

As Naruto predicted, Sasuke swayed a little when he stood up. He said, “Shit.”

Naruto considered helping him. There was no way to do that without having irritating the wound, so instead he let Sasuke go half a step in front of him, and kept a steadying hand on his back, or shoulder.

“Where is that address?” Naruto asked when they got to the street.

Sasuke glanced back, a spark of curiosity showing through the cloud of pain, “Not too far, actually. Near the fire station. It’s an old theater. What’s there?”

“The Shelter,” Naruto said. He noticed the annoyance flash across Sasuke’s face, before he turned to watch his step, so he explained. “No, I mean, it’s a real shelter, like those for homeless people.”

“That’s fitting,” Sasuke said, probably not with enough sarcasm for both of their comfort.

“It’s illegal,” Naruto continued, so he wouldn’t have to think about his mother’s kitchen, the entire apartment, ruined with a bomb. Not that they all didn’t know it would sooner or later happen. “There are too many people who avoid the city’s shelters because there is always police walking around, or cameras are following some politician who is doing a campaign. Those are for nothing more than old drunks kicked out of the house because of the alcohol.”

“And the one we are going to is for criminals.”

It was basically the truth. People with a past. People hiding, people in trouble… But mostly criminals.

“Iruka believes that everyone in need of help should get it,” Naruto explained, as they crossed another street. Maybe he was distracting Sasuke some, though pain is not that easy to ignore. “He was some sort of soldier until his conscience caught up with him. The Shelter was at first legally opened… But there was no way to make some people, no matter how much they needed help, to go there. There was also no way to keep greedy hands out of Shelter’s pockets, or politicians – and it’s downright illegal to keep the police out.”

“So how does the Shelter support itself?” Sasuke asked. Naruto thought that he was doing it not from real interest, but to keep him talking, so he did.

“Some of the money it earns by cooperating with agencies– or at least, they had been doing it with Jiraiya’s agency.” The large part of how Shelter was supporting itself Naruto knew nothing about.

Sasuke stopped and leaned on a lamppost, bending a little. He was in a lot pain and there was nothing Naruto could do. It seemed that Sasuke wanted was for him to keep talking. He asked, “I thought that the point was to keep them under the radar.”

Naruto frowned. It was, where was the confusion? He thought again about what he had said.

“No, not that kind of cooperating,” he finally realized. “They sometimes worked small jobs for the agency, like scouting, or distraction. Then Jiraiya would pay Iruka to give free beds and food to the people doing the job. Sometimes, depending on how much money was involved, they would also get some cash.”

Naruto didn’t say that this was his father’s idea.

“That sounds to me,” Sasuke said, gasping a little around the words, because he was checking the bandage with his fingers. “Like that shelter of yours isn’t exactly free.”

“It’s free,” Naruto answered, helplessly watching every spasm that ran though Sasuke’s body. “For the first couple of weeks, anyway. More importantly, no one asks any questions.”

After a minute, Sasuke was ready to go, though he was still slightly unsteady on his feet. Fortunately, the fire station’s roof was already visible. They entered the street they were looking for less than five minutes later, still wet and looking back over their shoulders.

tbc

A/N: I think I’m slowly getting back on track. There’s nothing worse than when that first wave of inspiration for a story washes over you and leaves you straggling to finish it. Still, even though I kinda think that this is all silly and unrealistic of me to attempt to write, I will do my best to finish it.

I hope you’re enjoying the story.
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Plato of Your Kind