Disclaimer: Don't own. Not a bit.

Chapter 2: The ARK Communion

Naruto sat down hard in shock as the strange figure spoke to him. The image appeared insubstantial, as if it were made up of millions of individual specks of light. Naruto strongly wished he knew how to cancel genjutsu, as that was the only thing he could think of that could have created something like this.

The image of the blond man chuckled. General Consensus had originally been that the child would be surprised, but receptive to contact. Given the events that probe #9 had just witnessed, the General Consensus was that the subject would be more wary at first, but ultimately even more receptive to their request and offer.

[[Your surprise has been anticipated by the Collective]]

[[We mean you no harm, child of the Planet]]

[[You have nothing to fear]]

Naruto blinked up at the hovering orb and the image displayed above it. He may have been only a child of barely six years of age, but he had definitely caught the emphasis given to the words Collective and Planet.

"Wh-who are you? What are you?" Naruto asked nervously, his eyes jumping around, scanning for signs of anyone who could be behind this.

[[We are the Collective of the ARK]]

[[We are the remnant of a world long since dead]]

Naruto blinked, confused by what the strange man in the flickering image had said.

"What do you mean the Collective? What's arc?" Naruto asked, mispronouncing the final word.

The image-man replied in the same calm voice as before.

[[ARK]]

The image-man began, correcting Naruto's pronunciation.

[[The Autonomous Record Keeper is the last record of our world]]

[[It was an attempt to preserve something of our world]]

[[Some memory of who we were, of what we had achieved]]

[[So that someday, some worthy soul on a distant world]]

[[Could learn of us and carry on our memory]]

[[And hopefully save their own world from making the same mistakes we did]]

Naruto stared up at the image-man, taking this all in.

Whatever is going on, this guy seems serious about this other world thing. And I don't know why any ninja would pull a prank like this on me. They always seem to dislike it when I pull pranks.

The image-man continued calmly.

[[The Collective is a collection of Artificial Intelligences]]

[[Created using the brain scans and memories]]

[[Of the primary creators of the ARK project]]

The image-man bowed his head momentarily.

[[Tifa Lockheart]]

Naruto watched in awe as more specks of light spiraled out of the top of the device. As they spiraled up, Cloud's image grew until he stood roughly more than five and a half feet tall. The sparks of light moved and formed new figures standing beside Cloud, one at a time as he introduced them.

The first figure to form was a short woman with long black hair that reached past her waist. She wore a white shirt cut off above her belly button, a black mini skirt, and black gloves that covered her arms from fist to elbow, with armored pads on both elbows.

[[Yuffie Kisaragi]]

A third figure appeared out of the spiral of lights. She was a couple inches shorter than the first woman, with short black hair and wearing a short green shirt and tan shorts. She wore a green head band, and had what Naruto tentatively identified as a Fuma shuriken strapped to her back. It looked different than the ones he was used to seeing ninja carry around Konoha, but it was still clear to him what it was.

[[Cait Sith]]

A short black and white cat wearing a crown and a cape and carrying a bullhorn formed next.

[[You can just call me Reeve]]

The cat spoke, waving at Naruto. Naruto dumbly waved back.

[[Barret Wallace]]

A heavy-set muscular black man standing well over six feet and with a gun in place of his right arm and a short black mohawk appeared next. He wore a torn up black jacket and black pants, and had several bands of metal around his waist and a distinctive tattoo on his left shoulder. Had Naruto been aware of a TV star on a far away world called Mr. T, he would likely have found the figure more humorous than intimidating.

[[Cid Highwind]]

A grumpy looking blond haired man wearing a navy blue jacket, white shirt, and green pants appeared. He had goggles strapped to his forehead, and a burning cigarette clenched between his teeth. He had a long spear, roughly half again his height, strapped diagonally across his back.

[[Rufus Shinra]]

A tall silver-blond man in a sharp white suit appeared next at the edge of the group.

[[Aerith Gainsborough]]

A short brunette with her hair in a long braid tied by a pink bow, wearing a slitted pink dress and with a long staff strapped to her back appeared next, smiling kindly.

[[Nanaki]]

A large red beast, about three and three quarters feet tall, appeared next in front of the group. Naruto marveled at how its muscles rippled as it moved, and the flame that seemed to remain perpetually at the end of its tail without burning it. Somewhere deep inside Naruto, something stirred, impressed by Nanaki, a feral beast with an affinity for fire.

[[Vincent Valentine]]

A black haired man with red eyes and wearing a deep red coat appeared next. He stood just behind and to the left of Cloud, and seemed to regard Naruto with a deep cold stare. He had a red headband keeping his hair mostly out of his eyes, a strange looking metal weapon strapped to his hip, and his left arm was encased in a golden metal claw.

[[And lastly myself, Cloud Strife]]

The last remaining particles of light floated to the man's back and formed a massive sword that was strapped to the original blond image-man's back. Cloud smiled down at Naruto, whose mouth was opening and closing in shock.

The (mostly) smiling figured remained quiet and flickering as they waited for this to all finally sink in to the mind of the bright blue eyed blond haired child that they had chosen to be their Legacy.

Finally, after what seemed like hours to the waiting AIs, but was barely more than three minutes in real time, Naruto managed to formulate a pair of words.

"Hot damn."

The quiet of the empty park was broken by the sound of several voices laughing as Cloud and his gang laughed. Even with all their computing power, none of the Collective had predicted quite such a reaction from the young child. This was going to be quite interesting indeed.

Half an hour later found Uzumaki Naruto safe and secure back in his apartment, ratty and damaged as it was. Upon finding out that the strange metal orb that the image-people were coming out of could hide its self from sight Naruto had immediately felt that it would be better to continue this strange but interesting conversation in the safety of his own apartment.

For years to come he would never be able to adequately answer the question, for himself or others, of just why he felt the need to keep all of this a secret. If asked, he usually replied that a lecture on deception being a ninja's greatest tool that he had been given that day in class had caused his decision. But upon further reflection, Naruto would always come to the conclusion that that wasn't it at all.

It wasn't for deception's sake that he hid what may have been the discovery of the past several centuries, if not in the entire history of life on the Planet. It was a deep seated instinct, buried within the life force of the planet itself, which gave Naruto the certainty that this enigma represented a power that was meant for Naruto and Naruto alone; that the Planet itself had chosen him.

Naruto took a seat on his bed and waited expectantly. A moment later he saw a green scanning beam seemingly appear from a point in the middle of the room, scanning all the walls, and presumably several meters outside of them as well.

Finally, after several seconds, the beam vanished back into the point in space, to be replaced by a sudden blurring of the air and the floating metal sphere coming into view.

Without preamble, the sphere floated over to the far wall and four panels on it slid open, allowing four metal rods to extend. The rods reached for the wall and using built-in equipment, attached them selves firmly to the wall. A moment later the low hum that the sphere always seemed to cause while it was visible dropped noticeably in volume, becoming a barely perceptible background noise.

Finally, as Naruto waited with baited breath, eyes twinkling with excitement, the panel on top of the sphere irised open and the particles of light began to spiral out again. To Naruto's great surprise and delight, the particles moved away from the sphere towards the center of the room, before coalescing once again into the form of the tall blond swordsman Cloud Strife.

"Welcome to my home Cloud." Naruto said excitedly, a genuine smile on his face.

These were the first people to ever come visit him after all, not counting Jiji of course. Well, first people-somethings at any rate. Naruto still wasn't sure what to really call them. They clearly lacked physical bodies, yet their minds were clearly intelligent. It would be several days before Naruto would fully understand what Cloud had meant when he had called himself and his colleagues Artificial Intelligences.

[[Thank you Naruto]]

[[It is our pleasure to be here]]

[[You are after all the child of the Planet]]

Naruto grinned deeper.

"So why did you appear to me anyways? I'm just an orphan. Surely there must be people more worthy than me."

The Cloud-image frowned for a moment. The image flickered and suddenly shifted to that of the long-black haired girl. Naruto remembered with no small modicum of pride that her name was Tifa.

The Tifa-image smiled and spoke, a sweet female voice seeming to come from her image, while deep down Naruto knew it was really coming from the sphere.

[[You must have more faith in yourself Naruto]]

[[We chose you for many reasons]]

[[Not the least of which is your kind heart]]

[[When we reached your world we had been traveling for eons through the black]]

[[We had been alone for so long our first thought was to find the Legacy]]

[[The one who we would share our knowledge with]]

[[And that one is you]]

[[You have the potential for power and skill to handle what we will teach you]]

[[And the good heart to use it wisely]]

Tifa giggled at the embarrassed look on Naruto's face.

[[Don't look so surprised Naruto]]

[[We have spent several months searching for the ideal candidate]]

[[And you were the only one we found]]

[[The others we deployed to search for a candidate are converging as we speak]]

[[Soon we will all be here, ready to assist in your training]]

Naruto blinked before replying hesitatingly, despite his excitement at the prospect of someone wanting to train him and him alone.

"So does this mean that there are more of you…what did you call yourself? Artifacial Indulgences?"

Tifa giggled as Naruto screwed up the unfamiliar words. As it was, the Collective was impressed with how much this child seemed to be grasping as it was. Intelligence wise he had definitely been a good choice.

[[Artificial Intelligences]]

[[And no. There is only one more that you haven't been introduced to yet]]

[[But she is so sterile and rule bound]]

Tifa leant forward and down and whispered conspiratorially to Naruto.

[[Between you and me, she's a real stick in the mud]]

[[Only cares about running the network, never the interesting things]]

Tifa stood back up again, a sad smile on her face.

[[Whoops. Looks like Cloud wants to speak to you again Naruto]]

[[I'll talk to you later. Keep that smile up]]

Naruto smiled in spite of him self as the grinning visage of Tifa-ne-san was replaced with the face of Cloud Strife, who Naruto silently thanked was not frowning any more.

[[So Naruto, once we begin your training, there will be no turning back]]

[[It will be hard and intensive]]

[[You will be learning many disciplines from us]]

[[From botany and medicine, to sword fighting and Materia usage]]

Naruto didn't recognize the strange word Cloud used at the end, that Materia thingy. But he grinned widely as something deep inside him self resonated with the word reassuringly. Whatever it was, it must be a good thing.

[[Each of us has something different to teach you]]

[[And all of it is useful, albeit, not all of it is useful on the battlefield]]

[[Or off it for that matter]]

Cloud said this last part almost as an afterthought, pointing at his sword as he did so. Naruto laughed as he got Cloud's joke.

[[While we and the Planet may have chosen you]]

[[The fact is that this training cannot be given to you against your will]]

[[The choice of whether to partake in this training is ultimately up to you]]

[[All I can promise]]

Naruto leant forward on his bed, grinning widely in anticipation.

[[Is that by the time we are through with you]]

[[You will be on your way to being the most powerful person on your world]]

Naruto nearly cried out in excitement. Up until today he had had no one to teach him anything about fighting, being a ninja, or really anything else for that matter.

[[And you will have been taught how to use your power responsibly]]

[[For the good of your world]]

[[The single most important role of the Legacy, child]]

[[Is to be a guard for the future]]

[[To ensure that the people of your world are lead down a path]]

[[That does not end as ours did]]

Cloud's eyes narrowed and he frowned again.

[[In the death of our Planet]]


Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage sat back in his chair and took a long drag on his pipe. Today had been stressful. Requisition meetings for three proposed civilian construction projects, a council meeting that had taken up most of the afternoon, and the debriefing of a team that had been assigned to search for his old apprentice, Orochimaru of the Legendary Sannin had left him exhausted and with a headache bigger than the Hokage Monument.

Sighing, the old man opened his desk and pulled out his crystal ball, the focus for a scrying jutsu he often used to covertly get a feel for how things were going in Konoha. He had been extremely busy the past week, but he always worried about Uzumaki Naruto. The young excitable blond was the spitting image of his father when he was that age sans the whisker marks, but he wouldn't know it for years to come.

Sarutobi always felt that it should have been he who gave his life to power the Death God's seal that was used to defeat the Kyuubi, and at no time did the pain and shame of allowing his successor to perform the technique and sacrifice his life weigh more heavily on him than when he thought of his son, the bright eyed ball of energy that was Uzumaki Naruto, secret son of the Yondaime Hokage.

When the image first formed in the ball of Naruto sitting in his bedroom, grinning excitedly while talking to a tall blond figure Sarutobi began to smile. He new few enough of the villagers or the shinobi treated Naruto like the hero his father had wished for him to be seen as, so it brought a smile to his face to see that a young man who was clearly old enough to know what Naruto carried inside him seemed to have become his friend.

Sarutobi's smile died aborning though as soon as he realized that there were several things odd with the image he was seeing.

First was a very strange metal sphere about two feet in diameter that appeared to be attached to Naruto's wall, a glowing circle on the top of the sphere.

Second was a small fluttering of little motes of light that seemed to fill the room, floating here and there, denser closer to the blond man, around whom they appeared to be slowly spiraling.

Is it some sort of genjutsu? Sarutobi worried, his eyes widening. Just as he prepared to call his ANBU and dispatch them to investigate, a third irregularity caught his eye.

The blond man cast no shadow. Not only did he cast no shadow, but when Sarutobi looked closer, he could see a faint outline of the furniture beyond the man through his body.

Sarutobi's eyes narrowed as he stood and motioned his ANBU to join him.

I need to get to the bottom of this, before whatever is going on gets Naruto killed.

With the sound of air being displaced and a sudden swirl of leaves in the office, Sarutobi and his two ANBU body guards shunshined away, heading for Naruto's apartment, and whatever that strange sphere and even stranger figure were.

AN: Here it is folks, chapter two. I had barely a few hundred words written for two days, and then early this morning inspiration hit. Hopefully after I sleep for nine hours I'll get an inspiration rush for Golden Viper next. Anyways, this chapter answers some of the questions I'm sure people had after reading chapter 1, but I know it has likely created far more. Not the least of which are likely "What happened to the Planet that Cloud and the others were on?", "How did their minds get to be AIs?", and what I am sure is coming but will be annoyed if I see, as that will mean the people didn't read this Author's Note, the myriad of questions or complaints about a dead woman being one of the minds turned into AIs. I will not give details, as I do not wish to spoil what will be explained in a future chapter. All you need to know is that the Cetra temple Aerith's body was left in had a preserving effect, keeping her brain intact, if dead.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I am sure you are all anxious and wondering just what everyone is going to teach Naruto. Please remember to read and review, as reviews always give me fuel to keep writing.

Review Responses - Because, admit it, you like hearing me reply to your reviews.

The Uchiha Itachi - No, stupid random punks, and not likely. As always, many thanks for reviewing cutie.

actionliker - Hehe, oh, they will be victims of a major prank later on.

jbalman - As I said in my message, I will abreviate here for everyone else's benefit. The inspiration for the story was initially what if Naruto started to train to wield a sword like Zabuza's at age six, and kept is training and true abilities hidden from all his classmates. Then I thought about ways to enhance that basic idea, and to get him the training, the sword, etc, and it hit me like a brick. Thrown by a SOLDIER enhanced blond. Off the top of Shin-Ra building. (I think you see where I am going with this)

inuboy86 - Well, here is the continuation. Enjoy.

Moonfal - Hehe, thanks man. Your reviews always brighten my day.

BOB JONES101 - No, yes, no, sort of. No comment (don't want to spoil plot elements). While I am not averse to fem-haku, to do so would be against the grain of this fic, regardless of whether it was a relationship with Naruto. Ultimate pairing is undecided. Naruto may or may not date a couple girls at different times, but never more than one at a time. (Any harem stuff is safely isolated in Phoenix Rising, and is very strictly kept to a menage a tois). Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as the first.

Kraken77 - And that makes writing totally worth it. I hope this chapter made your day as well.

The Chaos Master - As I said in my pm, I was given a mistranslation for dattebayo. Again, thanks for pointing the error out to me. Second, again, as I said. Don't worry about it. I put it in once as a prank. I'm as sick of it as you are, and often close a fic if I see believe it used more than once. As to the rest of the story, it percolated from one idea and I built on it. Utilizing FFVII came into play relatively late in the creative process, because it met all the requirements I needed, as well as providing a few more elements that were picture perfect for my vision for this story. Also, in all my reading I had yet to encounter a Naruto VII x-over anywhere close to this. The closest I have encountered is a story by EroSlackerMicha, whose works I will again recommend to anyone who likes my own stories, which involves Naruto and a whole slew of Final Fantasy worlds.

Bobboky - Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter.

And that is the end of the review responses. Tune in next time to find out whether or not I am sent into a mouth-foaming rage by idiots ignoring my author note on the Aerith situation.