Title: Our Truths Rewind

Fandom: Naruto

Characters:

Chapter: 8

Word Count: 1768

Warnings: Language
AN: *takes a deep breath*

*flips life off and moonwalks off*

Yes, life kind of went sideways. It included a lot of pain and a lot of cleaning but I think I beat it into submission. *looks shiftly around* It should. I'll be up and streaming under sunnyl tomorrow by the way if you want to come check out what I'm writing on.

*mutters*

Flopping onto his floor pillow, Naruto gratefully took the sake cup that Izumo handed him. He sipped at the warmed sake with a groan as he relaxed, almost melting. "I swear that this shit sucks even more than I thought it would," he complained.

Kotetsu chuckled as he put the plates of food that he carried from the kitchen down onto the table coffee table. "Well yeah, but at least you have a good home to retreat to," he teased, nudging Naruto's foot with his own. "Unlike you, I'm stuck in our apartment with Raidou and Genma in and out. Try having the four of us in our apartment. You know, the one that has one bathroom," he continued.

Iruka snorted as he walked into the living room with more plates of food in his hands. Genma rolled his eyes as he followed Iruka, carrying the tray with plates and chopsticks. Raidou came after them with his own hands full with the last of the food. "Yeah, but you two are having to look for another place anyways," Iruka said. "And have been before all of this started."

"It is a bit of a bitch, ain't it though? You gotta find a place that's close to the Archives. It doesn't matter that you lot can appear where you need to fast enough from anywhere, it's a matter of being able to keep your energy saved up for whatever has dragged you to the tower," Genma said. He sat on the couch and took his own place and chopsticks, eyeing the food.

Izumo sighed and nodded as he sat down. "We're actually just waiting for Naruto to open that one apartment building that he finally took over," he admitted. "We're also waiting to see what kind of apartments are going to be offered before we really try to apply for a place. It's perfectly in the zone while still being good sized."

"There are going to be four beds, three baths on the top floors, all the way down to studio apartments being offered in the lower floors," Naruto said. "And I can get you an application. We're going to start taking them in the next week for three and four bedrooms. True, you'd have to deal with construction for a few more months on the lower floors, but the upper floors are about ready for people to move into."

Izumo looked over to his lover, getting a shrug. "Yeah, sure," Kotetsu said. "I'll do that tomorrow if you have them now," he said.

Naruto stood, wandering over to his worktable, grabbing one of the blank applications that he had in a box to take to the new building manager the next day. He sat down and handed it over with a smile. "Alright, while those two read over that, what has been going on since I've been busy at the ANBU desk and with the mess in the Archives?" he asked.

Iruka groaned at him. "We have to call a meeting with the council about them trying things. Again. And I need to do a field test with one of my devices before it can be approved on top of that," he said. He sipped his tea before putting it to the side to put a dumpling onto his plate along with noodles. The rest of the group started to get their own food.

"I'm still finding more notes with suggestions of scrolls and files that we should look into. So far, I've found something like nineteen files that I need to redo because someone tried to change them on us. Luckily for us, our predecessors were so paranoid that you can't change them without doing a full copy seal and have your chakra registered with the main seal," Kotetsu said.

Naruto groaned and rubbed at his face, nodding that he was doing the same with several files. The blond winced at the amount of files he had to do that with still.

"Don't worry about it though. We're all good with doing this. Me and Izumo have been making more bars and pills though."

"And Tsunade is in talks with us about who would be good in making the bars for long term missions," Izumo continued. "She wants us to train someone."

Naruto shrugged as he chewed on some noodles, swallowing before he spoke. "The people making them would have to sign a contract and get a seal. You did warn her about that little fact, right?" he asked.

Genma smirked as he nodded. "Yep. We were shocked when me and Raidou had to do the seals when we started to work with you guys, but we did do them," he said. He slid down off the couch so that he could lean against Naruto's couch with his plate in hand. "Gai's looking interested in the recipe though. He thinks that for those like him, who are the heavy trainers in the various forms of training, and need more high protein, high caloric foods to replace what they burn, that the bars and pills would be a good substitute for some of the meals that he has to eat."

"And before you ask, we did tell him why we needed them and why we don't really eat them often ourselves," Raidou said, shrugging. "I suggested that he drop in on you or Iruka about the type of lunches that you guys make yourselves when we've been doing Archive upkeep," he warned them.

Naruto hummed, shrugging as he chewed and swallowed. "I'll warn Ibiki-san that I might have Gai-san and Lee-kun visiting for cooking lessons during the weekend," he said. "I'll also drop by and talk to Gai-san too since Iruka here is so busy with things."

"Would probably be a good idea," Kotetsu drawled, sneaking a tempura-fried eggplant onto Naruto's plate. He got a knowing look, but Naruto still ate the piece of vegetable. "How is the ANBU mission desk and Archives treating you?"

"I've discovered, so far, that there are six different files that weren't ever filed into the main Archive," Naruto said, making Iruka groan. "I'm working on making the official files so don't worry about that. It'll be delivered sometime next week. It's just taking me a lot of time to get this done," he warned. "I've also been working on the ANBU and Interrogation budget between everything else. We found out where some of their budget was disappearing off to. And we killed a few paychecks and mission pays that were supposed to be killed off a long time ago," he said.

"Where did the mission payments go to?" Genma asked as he raised an eyebrow. "What?" he asked as his friends looked at him. "I'm curious. I do have to sometimes work with ANBU and sometimes with Interrogation."

Iruka rolled his eyes while Naruto snorted. "It was going into a base account. From there, an ANBU can cash the check and put the money into whatever account they have for themselves so that they're not outed as ANBU by their paycheck if they don't use the hidden bank. It's mostly a go-between account as we figured out in the last week. I noticed that there was a lot more in there then there should have been though so it's mostly sitting there," Naruto said, placing his plate down.

Iruka smiled down at him. "That reminds me, if you need me to help, Tsunade has approved for me to work extra hours," he said.

Naruto tilted his head and smiled up at him. "That would be nice," he said, sitting back against his single chair, eating. "I need to finish off going through the budget, making sure that everyone is going to be paid for their missions and so on before I touch the money for supplies."

"I take it that you've been bringing the work home with you?" Iruka asked, as he eyed the boxes around the floor desk and the computer on it.

"Kind of have to, so yes."

"Naruto, dear, you need to relax. Get laid. Often and hard preferably," Genma drawled, dodging the slap to his head that Raidou had aimed at him, smirking.

Naruto moaned as he sprawled out in his spot, letting his head rest against Iruka's knee. "Yeah, but I'm not going to be able to have anyone come over while I have Ibiki-san living with me. As it is, my plans to have Gaara and his siblings stay with me during the next round of talks were killed. Since the activity outside of the notes that Kotetsu and Izumo here keep finding has followed me…"

"Means you can't have outside village visitors staying, and rarely as village guests no matter how much they're respected and trusted," Kotetsu finished for him, getting a nod as Naruto shoved a bite of noodles into his mouth. "Well then. At least we're able to visit since we're always followed around by these two and Crow-san."

"Yeah. I would have preferred to have Crow-san stay with me instead of Ibiki-san, but Crow-san is better at following Iruka around since he does more. Same with Gai-san and Kakashi-san. They're better at following those who do more activities then I do," Naruto said. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and relaxed again. "I'll live but for the time being it means that I can't even think of finding a partner, even for a quick fuck, until we've figured all of this out."

"Well, at least you're not Weasel-san," Crow drawled from his perch near the ceiling. "I heard that his lover has been working on cleaning out the compound while he works on doing your dirty work. Neither of them have done much more than share a kiss at night since they're both so exhausted. It's starting to make Weasel-san get twitchy."

"I'll get him some time in a few days for him to spend with his lover," Naruto promised, writing down a note. "I believe that Ibiki-san doesn't want his people to go insane. Being hidden or not, a sex-deprived Itachi sounds kind of scary."

"I just can't wait until we can tell the village what has been going on with him and his situation," Izumo groaned, letting his head thump against the back of the couch. His lover patted his leg and smirked. "And with the whole ass Uchiha massacre thing."

"Think we'll be able to gather the last of the information with the help of our note leaver?" Iruka asked, sounding thoughtful.

"Yeah, no shit," the group drawled before they laughed and turned their conversations to other things.