Chapter Text
The AC was broken.
“How,” Naruto started incredulously, “can our AC be broken?”
“Hell if I know,” Kiba snorted, loosening his tie around his neck. “But it’s broken and we have maintenance investigating the issue, but…” He shrugged. “There’s no way of knowing when it’s gonna work again.”
Naruto cursed. His forehead was already covered with a thin layer of sweat and his white dress shirt stuck to his back. He had to shrug off the jacket, even if he felt too bare without it.
“Get as many fans around as you can, and distribute the portable AC units to the hottest departments,” he told Kiba. “I’m gonna work from home until it’s fixed.”
“Sure, Boss,” Kiba said and left, stopping by outside of the room to talk to Karin, Naruto’s secretary.
Naruto cursed again and wiped his forehead. Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful. It wouldn’t take too long for The Hurricane, Konoha’s trashiest newspaper, to screech gleefully how one of the most technologically advanced buildings in Konoha had broken their entire fucking AC.
Naruto sat down behind his desk, trying to ignore the warmth emanating from behind him, and opened the email. He wrote a very annoyed message to his maintenance team and told them to figure out why it had broken here, of all places, and to fix it right away.
His office was on the top floor, and the heat here was already almost unbearable. Even the protective films on the windows didn’t help this high up. Sure, the portable AC unit here would help, but it would be better if it were used on the factory floors.
Naruto’s job wasn’t dependent on his location, so the rest could use the portable units until the issue was fixed and he would work from the coolness of his apartment until then.
With that settled, he closed the lid of his laptop, slipped it inside his bag and grabbed his suit jacket on the way out of the room.
Karin sat behind her desk, flaming red hair tied to a messy bun atop her head.
“So,” she said. “Broken AC, huh.”
“Do not start,” Naruto grumbled and glared at his cousin.
Karin pushed up her glasses and smirked at him. “Why? Gonna fire me? You know you wouldn’t be able to keep anything together without me.”
As annoying as it was, Karin was right. Naruto needed a secretary to keep track of things, and there was no one else better suited for that role than Karin.
The fact that Karin was his cousin made their interactions easier. If only a little.
Karin snapped open a paper fan and flicked it in front of her face. “So you’ll escape while the rest of us roast?”
“You’ll get the portable AC unit here, don’t complain,” Naruto said and rolled his eyes. “It’s better that I’m not here, it frees more equipment for others.”
“I wish all CEOs were as considerate as you,” Karin muttered and glanced at her computer screen. “Fine. You have a meeting with Tsunade tomorrow at noon, but nothing else.”
“I’ll check the details from my calendar when I’m home,” Naruto said and then, with a wave of his hand, left for the elevators.
The AC system hadn’t been broken for more than an hour, and he could already feel the effects even deeper in the buildings. Usually the cacophony of scents was well in control, but now, even with the mandatory use of patches, it seeped through everything.
In the elevator, Naruto punched the button taking him to the garage and combed his damp, blond hair from his face. He couldn’t wait to get home and take a shower. He wouldn’t leave his apartment at all until the damn AC was completely fixed.
The garage was cooler, but not by much since the AC wasn’t working down here either. Naruto gritted his teeth as he walked to his car, his pride and joy.
Naruto had paid obscenely much to get a black Chevrolet Impala imported to Japan that was in pristine condition, but it was his baby and he treasured it. He had installed some safety measures into it without sacrificing the style. He dropped his laptop bag on the passenger seat, turned on the ignition and drove out.
He adjusted the AC to blast at full power (one of the modernizations he’d done for the car when he’d gotten it) as he drove into the buzzing streets of Konoha.
When he stopped at the traffic lights, he pulled up a holographic screen in the dashboard, opening The Hurricane’s front page.
U-TECH SUFFERS AN AC MALFUNCTION IN THE HIGH SUMMER, the first headline screamed.
“Fuck,” Naruto muttered.
Amaterasu would be insufferable. Naruto already knew that. They would be forced into the same space in a promotional event at the end of the week when one of the leading chip manufacturers, Byakugan, would launch their next generation.
Naruto was already not waiting for the socializing and the forced compliments, but he just knew he would be hearing about this mishap for the rest of the year.
It was a disgrace. If Naruto’s parents had been still alive, he would’ve been chewed to hell and back.
As it was, he was alone, and this mess was his to deal with. And hope that his board of directors wouldn’t take this as a show of his incompetence.
Originally, Naruto never should’ve been the CEO in the first place, and some of the members in his board of directors—namely Danzo and the two hags that followed him—seemed to think the company was better off without him.
But U-TECH was Naruto’s and it had belonged to his parents before. Minato and Kushina had built it from the ground up, using their own genius to start a new era of affordable tech. Today, U-TECH had several offices around Japan that produced everything you could think of—alarm systems, cameras, televisions, and computers.
Naruto had wanted to make games, but when his parents had died a few years ago, everything would’ve fallen apart faster than a house of cards if he hadn’t stepped in. Just in time too, considering Danzo and the others had almost managed to steal the leadership.
Being a CEO of a company that had been the life’s work of his parents was something Naruto had never planned, but here he was.
His phone started ringing, and he knew without checking it was Danzo, so he ignored the call and focused on driving home. The traffic in Konoha was always terrible, but shortly after noon, even more so. It took him an hour to drive the short distance to his penthouse and get his car in the garage.
At least here the AC was working. Naruto sighed with relief as he stepped out of the car and noticed how cool and scentless the air was. He grabbed his laptop bag, locked the car doors and sauntered to the elevator.
Unlike other CEOs, Naruto didn’t like to live richly. He didn’t like apartments that looked like they were ripped from a magazine. He could appreciate the tech, but to him, the place where you lived and spent most of your time should look and feel like home.
So even though he had the money to buy the most luxurious penthouse imaginable, he hadn’t. His apartment was on the smaller side, with a big living space, a nook for his bed and a separate room for his own gaming projects.
He turned on the lights with a gesture and dropped his bag on the couch before making his way to the bathroom. After a quick shower, Naruto felt a lot better and could finally breathe easier.
At least this building had working AC. Goddamnit.
“Call Danzo,” Naruto said to his phone and went to grab a shirt.
“Ignoring my calls is not a good look,” Danzo said the second the call connected.
“I was driving,” Naruto said, fully knowing it was a poor excuse since he could’ve answered with voice commands if he wanted to. “Besides, I already know what you’re saying. No, we don’t know why the AC broke. The maintenance is looking into it.”
“Someone leaked it to the Hurricane,” Danzo said and Naruto could hear the impatience from his tone.
“I don’t doubt that,” Naruto said and pulled a shirt over his head. “But we have hundreds of people in the building. There’s literally no way to tell who it was. It’s just an AC, Danzo, the entire building hasn’t exploded.”
“When your parents were in control, we didn’t have important machinery breaking up on us,” Danzo snapped.
Naruto laughed. “How can I know it wasn’t you who leaked it in the first place?” he asked, walking up to his phone. “Maybe it was you who sabotaged it. Maybe I need to look at the camera feeds.”
They both knew he wouldn’t find anything—if it had been sabotage, it was well done because there was no sign whatsoever that it had been tampered with.
“Watch your tone, brat,” Danzo said angrily. “You’re the CEO only because that was the last will of your parents and they left the company to you in their testament.”
A testament you tried your hardest to fight against, Naruto thought but didn’t say. “Don’t taunt me then, old man. I know you and the others want to take over.” He thought about his parents. “And as long as I live, I won’t let you destroy the hard work my parents did.”
He hung up and threw the phone on the couch.
“Shit,” Naruto muttered and rubbed his face with his palm. He would, probably, need to be even more careful from here on out. U-TECH was one of the best tech developers in Japan right now, and their profit ensured everyone could earn a decent living. That, at least, had been the philosophy Naruto’s parents had maintained and that had passed on to him.
But Danzo, along with his cronies, Koharu and Homura, were cut from different cloth. They represented the side of capitalism Naruto had always hated—to give more to the rich and less to the poor.
It wasn’t the first time Naruto wondered if Danzo had gotten his parents killed somehow. There was no way to prove it and officially it had been pronounced as an accident, but Naruto just couldn’t get over the feeling there was more to it.
But he had to tread carefully. He couldn’t let Danzo find out he was suspecting him. Blaming him for sabotaging the AC hadn’t been the wisest move either, but somehow Naruto just knew, even without proof, that Danzo had made it happen somehow.
The geezer was so in love with money and power he would undoubtedly do anything to hold on to the status he now had. Or to get a CEO he could actually control.
“Not as long as I breathe,” Naruto muttered and sighed.
Sometimes he really thought he was no good at this. When he’d first been told U-TECH was his, it had driven him into a bout of insomnia and anxiety-fueled days when he’d tried to figure out how in the fuck he, a game developer, was going to keep the company afloat.
It had required a lot of frantic studying and a lot of help, but he managed. That was why he still had Karin to help him, along with his own trusted group of friends scattered in all departments at the HQ to keep their eyes and ears open.
Danzo could try to steal the business from him, but Naruto wouldn’t give up without a fight.
He turned on the television, took out his laptop and checked the calendar. Just like Karin had said, Naruto would have a meeting with Senju Tsunade on the following day, to discuss an order of updated equipment to one of her hospitals. It would be a perfect deal and bring in a lot of money.
Naruto was carefully optimistic, but a lot of things could still go wrong. Tsunade was, undoubtedly, in talks with Amaterasu as well, and whoever would be able to negotiate a better deal would win.
Konoha was filled with different tech companies focused on different areas, but ever since U-TECH’s founding, it’d had one enemy: Amaterasu, Konoha’s oldest and most distinguished tech developer, established and controlled by the Uchiha Clan. They were old and traditional, having been a part of Konoha’s society for over a hundred years.
Naruto didn’t have a huge family. Most of the Uzumaki Clan still lived in Uzushio, a few hundred kilometers to the south, near the coast. The only Uzumakis now working at U-TECH were Naruto and Karin.
It was up to them to keep everything together.
Naruto looked at the launch event scheduled on the following Friday and anxiety gripped his heart.
Publicly, he had to show he had everything in control. But the truth wasn’t as optimistic. Amaterasu had money, power and reputation. U-TECH had all of those too, but it was only around twenty years old, as opposed to Amaterasu, who had just celebrated its 107th birthday.
Many thought Naruto was crazy, going up against such a permanent fixture of Konoha. But his parents had thought it would be possible, so he would do his best to honor their goals.
“I won’t give up,” he muttered, eyes on the background of his phone.
In the photograph, three people smiled widely. Kushina, with her signature red Uzumaki hair falling to her shoulders. Minato and Naruto, both blond and blue-eyed. The picture had been taken around five years ago, when Naruto had been in his late twenties.
Just a few days later, they had died.