You would not believe me if I told you that I finished the first thousand words in one day, and the last thousand words in one night, but the middle thousand words took me eight months to write. Between two hurricanes, four holidays, my birthday, more shifts at work than I can care to count, and god knows how many women...time to write just got lost in translation, I guess?

No excuses, though. I'm sorry for testing your patience like that. In lieu of review responses, if anybody out there was around when I first published this fic a year ago, I'd imagine you're ready to read more of it.

Let's get this trainwreck moving.


The yacht had run non-stop, at high speed, throughout the night. In the early hours of the morning, long after the sinkhole of Nami no Kuni had vanished from sight, Naruto woke up in darkness as his body rammed into the opposite wall.

"What'd we hit?" He groaned, now wide awake. Blindly fumbling his way to the door, he twisted the handle, throwing it wide to see...a cliff. It wasn't a particularly big cliff, as cliffs go. At least, as far as Naruto was aware, it wasn't a big cliff. The nose of the boat had crunched in, though, and it was very clearly taking on water. Over the immediate smells of smoke and motor oil, Naruto could almost taste the sea breeze. The sun was still low in the sky as he launched himself off of the yacht's deck with chakra, managing to get a handhold on the cliff's rough surface.

"You know," Naruto said to nobody in particular, "maybe I should have taken Kidomaru up on using that scroll."

It was a long climb. Even with the painless nature of it all, using chakra to stick after his initial grab had stayed in place, he was somewhere between bored and exhausted for the duration. After the first hour, he looked up and down, only thinking of the fact that he wasn't even halfway through with his journey. He might have guessed incorrectly about the size of the cliff.

He sped up.

Practically running on all fours, there was a certain natural grace about his movements. As his elbows tucked back against his stomach, arms preparing for new contact, his feet kicked off of the stone. As he looked down again, he was hit with the feeling of inadequacy; he'd barely progressed at all, since the last time he checked. Redoubling his efforts for a second time, and raging at the lunacy of it all, he shot up like a bullet. Twisting mid-air, even as he continued rising, he found the answer: a glowing-white matrix of Fuinjutsu that was pulling the world together differently than natural physics would allow.

Whoever he was dealing with, here, they were some clever bastards. The idea was, obviously, to tire him out before he reached the top of the cliff face. Unfortunately, they hadn't counted on his nature as a chakra-production machine. He summoned one clone, then another, and another, until enough stretched out that they nearly reached the tide. With a mighty heave, the blond sent his clones rippling forward and up. They looped through the air, a sinuous coil of artificial bodies that stretched towards a heaven that had been destroyed long ago. A shout let him know that the topmost clone had a grip on the edge. One kawarimi later, and he was at the forefront of the line. His clones dispelled, their purpose fulfilled, and Naruto pulled himself up to witness a site that no mortal eyes had seen in decades.

A city built in spirals, layers and rings that his Sharingan might have known the significance of. It was a dead city—a dead nation. His nature as a ninja, and upbringing as a thief, were warning him that this was a place he shouldn't be. A place that simply should not have been here to begin with. He couldn't help himself, though...after all, he was stranded. At the very center, in this city of no movement, there was a domed building of blue glass that shone against the strengthening sunlight.

That was where he was headed, he decided. If it was important, or relevant, then it would be in the heart of the onetime city-state.

Who are you, that you do not know your history?

He didn't know what spoke to him. He didn't know if he'd been spoken to. He simply understood the concepts of those words as they passed by his conscious mind.

Hell's time lost-son, four corpses in one grave. Long forgotten, left to waste away...a cursed child. A fractured shell, made to look whole. One whose word is binding, for himself and others.

"Who's there?" Naruto growled, one hand gripping his head...only for silence to greet him. "Alright then. Play your games."

He sprung forward, chakra launching him across a fair portion of the wasted city. As he landed silently on a rooftop, he saw the rising sun flash its light past the towering wall—enough to see that grooves had been cut into the ground below. Glittering diamonds ran across the ground in glittering veins that curled and curved in ways that could never be natural. Or, at least, Naruto thought they were diamonds. He wasn't sure. How rich had this place been, that they could put diamonds in their road construction? That just seemed absurd.

He trekked across the city-state's skyline, such as it was, silent in his approach. His steps quickened as he slowed his breathing, a balancing act of Raiton and Futon chakras across his body. The utter stillness of his surroundings irked him..but as he gave more weight to the memories he'd seen of Obito and Kakashi's lives, that irritation gave way to apprehension. This place had been desolate for a long time. Longer than his own life, and probably at least twice as much. Nature hadn't reclaimed it; he was the first living thing to set foot here in decades—that thought was somewhat sobering.

Whatever had killed them could kill him, too.

We are not so different, you and I. Sons of the same father and mother, separated only by...a difference of degree, as it were. You will understand, soon enough.

But would he?

That shining dome called to his sense of exploration, and a thief's understanding of value; nothing mundane would be lit up like that. Especially not after all these years. The hairs on the back of Naruto's arms had raised, a feeling of goosebumps crawling from his shoulders to his scalp. He passed over broken buildings, rubble, and the telltale glint of metal that had been protected from rust by chakra. What was this place? So much had been destroyed—so many bleach-white skeletons revealed by the light of the sun—but his footfalls stirred no dust. He'd escaped from the destruction of Nami no Kuni, technically AWOL; was this his karmic punishment for the death of a nation?

No wind stirred as Naruto crept forward, the all-encompassing silence briefly broken by the sound of Gato's yacht finally capsizing in the distance. It had gone to join its former owner in the unreachable fathoms below the waves; Naruto had made sure to bury him deep. Diamonds sparkled in the ground below him, and Naruto had to resist every urge he'd learned in his short life to avoid ripping a fist-sized chunk out. A fraction of all that gemstone could land him a wealthy retirement, keeping Ayame and the rest of his crew cared for until they died.

The thought of his forged-in-fire family shook Naruto from his methodical approach, the uncharacteristic happening: he slipped. As he entered the short freefall, his hands came together to perform a quick shunshin that left him standing on top of a pile of rubble that had previously been a home.

Or, at least, that was Naruto's best guess. Nobody was here to let him know otherwise. Surely, it must have been a home? The surrounding buildings were all similar, and nobody would have just built all this and lived somewhere else...but those would be questions for another time.

The blond watched in horrified fascination as the stone he'd swapped places with was melted down and consumed by the purest chakra he'd ever felt. And yet, at the same time, there was a deep evil to its nature. A perfect mix of light and dark, a living vessel of destruction. One that Naruto would know outrivaled him, if he looked inside himself to see it. He refused that denial of strength.


The serenity of the forest was something that Naruto had been used to for a long time. Even before his arrival in the City of the Dead, animals incapable of overcoming their base instincts had fled his immediate surroundings. A side-effect of his existence.

A side-effect of his own time-lost actions, long before his birth. A gift that was not—that had never been, like the shadow of a ghost who haunted the hollows of a world left behind. He took pride in the hand he'd played, after the way it had been dealt to him. He took pride in the knowledge that he always kept his word.

Subconsciously, humans directed their travel around him. It was nothing new to him, and they had no idea what caused them to do it; their own spur-of-the-moment decision, they might tell themselves. Their minds would never be able to comprehend the true answer. It wasn't that he exuded an aura of fear...if anything, he was more welcoming than any of the demons who'd managed to continue their existence after the destruction of Makai. If somebody wasn't aware of him, or didn't recognize the aura of his presence, they would act like any other animal, and do their best to leave him be. Only the strongest wills would be able to resist that urge.

Naruto was thankful for the peace. It gave him time to think. Naruto didn't wonder exactly how much he'd changed in the years since his departure.

Yuurei knew the horrors that lurked in the realm beyond the spoken word.

Yuurei was thankful they hadn't seen fit to rip his lungs out from his chest.


The dome had been difficult to get inside without touching the homicidal diamond veins, but Naruto had managed. Standing on bare stone, he saw something that he hadn't been prepared for: sitting down on a throne of the very same diamonds he'd avoided was a man who resembled him.

"At last, you've arrived. I was beginning to worry that I was wrong." He said.

Spiky blond hair traveled past his shoulders, and his eyes were a ring-filled lilac instead of Naruto's own natural red...but he would recognize his own whisker-marks anywhere.

"Who are you? Wait..no. What are you?"

"I'm you, and yet not. I'm a clone." The enthroned man said.

"A...clone?"

"Made solid, a physical presence made permanent. Because you...or, rather, I, mixed the energy of humans, gods, and demons. You and I are different kinds of demons, however. I am...a god-killer. A destroyer. A purveyor of death. Remnants of an old guard, left behind with the express purpose of finding you."

"And I'm..."

"The keeper of the laws, as decided by the gods. The reason my world fell into chaos was because the Oathkeeper died, and a new one wasn't left to take their place. But you...something changed, the night you were born. Your father tried to make you a Jinchuriki, a human with a demon sealed inside of them, but...something went wrong. I don't know what it was. I haven't left this city in ten thousand years. I do know, though, that you were supposed to have a giant demon fox sealed in your gut. Either Minato used too much force when he fought, or something complicated the birth, or...no, I won't bother with hypotheticals. Technically, you are a demon trapped inside a mortal body, which works more to your benefit."

"What?" Naruto asked.

He hated sounding unintelligent. It was a consequence of being older than the rest of his graduating class—the natural assumption for the first years of his schooling was that he had failed twice already. He hadn't taken it upon himself to prove them wrong, given that his days had consisted of absolute boredom before Mizuki had made the deal to train him, but...this was so far beyond his realm of experience, he couldn't help his questioning.

"You are this world's Oathkeeper. Anyone who makes a promise, swears an oath, or otherwise gives their word to you will be forced to keep it. But the same is true of you. Anything you say you'll do, you must, or else you'll meet the same fate as those who fail to keep their promises to you."

Naruto had watched what happened to Mizuki on the night he took the Kinjutsu Scroll.

"And why does a human body benefit me?" That was, without a doubt, the most puzzling thing about this series of monologues. Unbidden, Naruto raised a hand to his throat. Feeling those lines of scarred, off-color skin, Naruto really had to wonder: why was his ability to die an advantage?

"Demons grow by killing their enemies. Humans grow by training their minds and bodies. You, who are both..."

"Can do both. Is that what the lights signify when I kill someone?"

"More or less. One of the pitfalls of your current state is that you can't absorb the full scope of your enemies' abilities after you kill them—which means that if you want to kill me, you'll need to wait until you've burned away your mortal shackles to receive all the benefits. Not that I know how many there will be! I'm just a clone, after all. I haven't spoken to anybody since before this city fell into ruin. I promise, I don't normally ramble this much."

"Then teach me, if you're going to take up all of your time like this." Naruto replied, half expectant and half dismissive. "I don't care what."

The sitting man laughed.

"You're hungrier for knowledge than I was." He grinned. "Be careful. The pursuit of wealth has led more good men to ruin than I could count in a thousand lifetimes...but I wasn't left here to abandon you when you finally came to me. Sit down—the first thing I'm going to teach you is stillness."


It had been a terrible week, Sasuke decided. No...a terrible series of weeks. Team Seven had set out on their first and only C-rank mission, their sensei had been killed and Naruto had been presumed KIA buying time for his teammates' escape. He and Sai had been put on a new team with some girl named Ayame, they'd trained together for two months before their new sensei had registered them for the Chunin Exams, and he got his ass beat by a knockoff Bruce Lee. Badly.

After barely passing the first exam, thanks entirely to the fact that Ayame got scared into not even taking her test—thanks to her utter lack of stealth—they'd been thrown into the Forest of Death by a crazy sadomasochistic slut. All their food had been stolen two days ago, their water ran out yesterday night, and now? Now?

Now they were being attacked by a pedophile wearing a Kusagakure headband.

Things had, in fact, gone belly-up quite some time ago. Now would be the exact time to start considering an early retirement and marrying some rich civilian woman...if he were a coward.

Instead, his hands came together to form a series of hand seals. A wall of mud came up to shield him from sight as Sai ran backwards, brush flying furiously across his scroll canvas. And Ayame...ghost-stepped.

It was the term they'd come up with for her particular conjunction of the "Academy Four" jutsu. She created several basic clones, used a henge to disguise herself as a poorly-made clone, and launched a shuriken in an arc that even an academy student could hit blindfolded—except that she missed it, on purpose, before using a kawarimi to strike and a shunshin to escape. It would only work once, maybe twice if she got lucky, but it would be worth it if she could create an opening for her teammates to strike with.

As Sasuke's Doheki fell, Ayame's kunai cut into their attacker's gut from behind, slicing deep into a kidney. But before she could pull away, snakes erupted from the wound, twisting with one another as they ran up her arm. As a rainbow of scales enveloped her, up to the shoulder, four kunai shot from her assailant's hands, and a sword launched from his mouth. The sword pierced through Sai's ink tiger, while the kunai pinned him to the ground with Sasuke.

"Ah...I would love to take you two for myself, but I think there might be some issues if I gave you my blessings. So I suppose, instead, I'll have to give your dear friend a parting gift."

The Kusa-nin's head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, vertebrae snapping as he stared Ayame directly in her eyes. His mouth opened wide, neck extending before his fangs closed in on her helpless collarbone, and she knew nothing but darkness in the seconds that followed.

"What did you do to her?" Sai yelled, heaving himself forward with enough force that the kunai pinning him were rendered useless.

It was the first time Sasuke had seen his teammate mad. The first time he'd seen Sai display any emotion.

"When your village and its methods aren't enough for her...she'll come to seek me out." The snakes retreated inside of the Kusa-nin as he pulled his head away. His back didn't even show a sign of injury as Ayame fell to the ground, nearly lifeless. "I hope that you can survive the rest of the exam!"

And just like that, he was gone, seeming to melt into the ground as he disappeared.