So, while reading a few stories and bringing on several shows and games as of late I had a story pop into my head and so far, I have yet to see anything like it on this site so I thought I'd give it a shot and go for it. So, what is this? Well, this story is a fusion of ideas primarily set in the Naruto-verse with elements of Ghost in the Shell, Sword Art Online, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the philosophy of transhumanism. So, this is not a true crossover but takes elements and different technologies that exist in all of them into this story. Please leave some reviews, constructive criticism only please, flaming or haters will be ignored.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I do not own Naruto as it is the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Viz Media. I do not own any elements or technologies taken from Ghost in the Shell, Sword Art Online, or Deus Ex: Human Revolution; they belong to their respective owners. All I own is any unrecognizable characters, plotlines/scenarios, and the computer on which I am writing this on. This is a not for profit fictional story, please do not repost on another site without my permission or copy and paste it and claim it as your own (as there are those people out there). See the foreword for the full disclaimer.

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Chapter 1: Pilot – This is the World We Live In

One hundred years ago the Third World War broke out. Nations defended and attacked each other relentlessly. Entire cities were eradicated through the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry. After five years of fighting a ceasefire was made. The dead were buried and their loved ones mourned their losses. Countries redrew their borders and rewrote policies. A new set of countries that came out of this travesty was the Elemental Countries, a chunk of land which composed of a mass majority of Southeastern Asia as well as a large part of the easternmost portion of Russia as well as other countries. The larger of these countries formed a loose coalition known as the Elemental Countries Fair Trade Agreement.

These nations inside of the Elemental Nations are ruled by a joint committee of military and civilian elected officials that help flesh out laws that affect both internal and international affairs. While there is an elected Prime Minister, or Daimyo, for each country that has their own military that is sourced from the nation from volunteers, there also exist Private Military Contractors, or PMC's, that help with national security… for a price.

One good thing that came out of the Third World War was the evolution of cyberspace. At one point, one had to use a terminal like a laptop or desktop computer in order to access the net, now one from birth gets an implant that allows a person's consciousness to enter the digital realm. One can still manually manipulate computers like they did in years prior, but the new standard is to use the neural-link. Like the internet of the 21st century the internet of the 23rd century there are sites where people congregate to find like-minded people like themselves like the ancient Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit behind usernames and pictures that may be outdated or misleading. Now all members of social circles are represented by a member's mind as avatars. Now, these can range from what a person is wearing that day with little changes to their appearance to full on cosplay, it really is up to the imagination of the person creating the avatar.

In order to save on both costs to travel and to better the environment, businessmen and women use the internet and their avatars to conduct business from stock exchanges and business deals to your average run of the mill meetings. Obviously there the original reasons that the internet was created, cats and porn, but one of the lucrative markets since the creation of the Oculus Rift has been the virtual reality game industry. With the evolution from VR goggles to neural links included with the goggles allowed the wearers to immerse themselves fully into whatever world they wished. With implantable neural chips they merely cut out the middle man and allowed the user to link up to the net without anything more than one cable attached to the back of the neck, or in the case of the richer and well off, they could connect wirelessly.

Now with the evolution of cyberspace and the ways to enter it, the prosthetic industry has advanced to the point at which one can't even tell if an amputee who is wearing a prosthetic is actually wearing one without them removing it in front of someone. Retinal display implants are quite common to remedy both short and near sightedness as well to have a personal heads up display that can display anything from an augmented reality map to who is calling you. Torpor, or therapeutic hypothermia, has evolved to allow a patient that has received a massive amount of trauma to be saved, or if necessary give them the time needed to receive either transplants or prosthetics. There are small colonies on the moon as well as a small research colony on Mars which constantly provide data and research on how humans can explore the vast universe further.

This is the world in which this story takes place. We follow a young man named Naruto Namikaze-Uzumaki. He, like many others before him, have their roles to play in life. What role is that? Well, that would be telling, now wouldn't it?

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Eleven years ago…

Five-year-old Naruto was ecstatic at what he got to do today, he was on his way to his father's company for the annual 'Bring your child to work day' that the company sponsored. Normally his father would bring him in and let him see the things that his father would be working on. But never officially, as it was against company policy to let anyone outside of the company see classified projects or files. But today the company would allow children of their employees to see what their parents did, everything from programming to manufacturing to sales. There would be a short tour that would show off the facility to the children, followed up by a bunch of stations that the children could then try their skills at if they wanted to, then lunch, and then they would spend the remainder of the day with their parents seeing how they worked.

What is this company? Well, it is Konoha Industries, a PMC with subsidiaries inside of many other fields including biomedical as well as electronics and gaming. And currently, Naruto's father is the current CEO of the company. This would explain why security was heightened as well as Naruto's bodyguard Yuugito was more on edge than usual. But that wasn't right, she was never on edge, or at least she never showed it, but today she was definitely showing that she was on edge.

"Ehh, nee-chan why are you so jumpy?" Naruto asked as she jumped slightly as he touched her sleeve.

The young woman beside him dressed in a black suit and red tie that the company provided her with looked back to him and with a false smile said, "Nothing Naru-chan." Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses that also acted as augmented reality glasses.

"Grr, why do you keep calling me that?" he huffed with his arms crossed. Yuugito just smiled at his antics. She had come into his life close to a year ago when the lady of the house, Kushina, said that she was pregnant again and wouldn't be able to protect her 'Naru-chan' in public and they hired her to do so in his mother's place.

Minato Namikaze was also the overprotective type. He hired the best marksman out of the academy for all weaponry which included everything from throwing knives to high powered sniper rifles. He also made sure that the applicant was able to effectively identify a specific martial art and counter it to neutralize an attacker. Said applicant was Yuugito who came straight from the PMC's Academy with top marks in everything Minato was looking for. Naruto was shy around her the first time they met, but after a month they had a younger brother-older sister relationship.

The school bus pulled into the employee garage and let the students out. Many of the students had parents that worked at the company such as the Yamanaka and Nara families. They walk to an entrance which is flanked by two guards armed with batons, Tasers, and handguns. One turned around and swiped a keycard and the doors opened to a lobby and a beautiful one at that. The blonde-haired receptionist had two screens up with various appointments and was flicking through them as fast as one's eyes could move. On the back of her neck was one of the wireless transmitters that connected her computer to her neural network. Images and appointments continued to flash and disappear on screen as the group approached the front desk.

"Excuse me," Naruto's teacher said, making the receptionist looked up, yet her work continued. "We're here for the 'Bring your child to work day'."

"One moment," she said before pausing. A small green phone icon appeared in the top corner of her screen for a minute before turning red and disappearing. "Our representative will be down shortly."

The group stood around for five minutes before the doors of an elevator opened and out walked a red haired upper twenties woman that looked to be in her eighth month of pregnancy. In her hands is a tablet. "Hello everyone and welcome to Konoha Industries-," she trailed as she looked over the crowd and saw a familiar spiky red-haired child. "Hi Naru-chan!" she waved childishly. Naruto hid behind his bodyguard in embarrassment as the rest of his class chuckled at his 'misfortune'.

"Must be the pregnancy hormones," Yuugito muttered to Naruto.

"What are hormones?" Naruto asked.

Yuugito looked around realizing that he didn't even know what those even are. "Your parents will explain them to you when you get older."

The tour went along as the children viewed several different departments in the building. First up was the biomedical ward where there was a person wearing a prototype limb and was testing it out conveniently as the children looked in. Next up was the experimental weapons wing where there was a man testing out a new anti-personnel explosive dispersal unit called Typhoon. They even went to the part of the building that was dedicated to the Academy, the school that would teach would be initiates to the company the skills they would need to be part of the mercenary forces that both protected the company and the nation. Finally, they arrived at the final department that was acquired when Konoha Industries bought out Uzu Productions through the marriage of Kushina Uzumaki and Minato Namikaze; this department was the company's video game production which kept its name of Uzu Productions.

"And here we have Uzu Productions, our video game division. How many of you have heard of our previous title Ages of War?" Kushina asked. Several children slowly raised their hands while Naruto's shot up, after all it was his parents' company that made it. "I hope that it was your siblings that play it," she said slyly with a smile. "Well regardless some of your parents in there are hard at work at our newest venture Age of Shinobi, a game in which you can take on the role of a ninja mercenary and take on missions and your objective is to be the most powerful shinobi or kunoichi that you can be. Now, who's excited about it?" Many hands shot up, including Naruto's. "Well you'll have to wait a bit longer; the game has just entered pre-Alpha so we have a bit to go before we're ready to debut to the public." They walked back to the main lobby where several people were waiting for them with signs that had different departments written on them. "Before you are the department heads of where your parents work, please head on over to the proper department head and they'll bring you to your parents."

They paired off until only Naruto and Yuugito remained. "This way, Naru-chan. Your father is waiting for you in his office," Kushina said.

They entered an elevator which took them to the CEO's office. There behind Minato's personal receptionist's desk were two pink haired women, one Naruto's age and one that was her mother, the mother was showing her daughter how to manage different programs she used on a daily basis. Naruto entered his father's office with his mother where they saw him working on lines of code. He noticed the door opening and stood up to greet them.

"So, fishcake, did you enjoy the tour?" Minato asked as he teased his son.

"Tou-saaaaan," Naruto complained. "My name means Maelstrom, not fishcake."

"Indeed, it does. Why don't you come over here, I have something to show you." Minato led his son over to his desk. It was one of the fancy executive smart desks that had not only a touch screen on the entire table top but also projectors to allow the user to multitask. Minato tapped a few commands on his desk and up from the floor rose a cylinder around a foot in diameter until it stopped just below Naruto's chin.

"What is it, tou-san?" Naruto asked befuddled.

"This, my son, is my corporate legacy," Minato replied as the holotank lit up, a chip on the side lighting up blue as well. "Naruto, say hello to the Juubi-class AI 'Shinju'." The character that appeared was a young woman in a pure white kimono. She had black hair, an ample bust, and shapely hips and rear. Every man's ideal image of a woman. She also had a pair of white fox ears as well as ten bushy tails behind 'her'. "Good afternoon, Shinju-chan."

She bowed her head slightly. "Good afternoon, Namikaze-sama," she replied politely.

"Naruto, say hello to Shinju-chan," he said with a smile.

"Ano… Hello Shinju-san," Naruto shyly said.

"Well aren't you adorable, son of my creator?" she replied.

"Well Naruto, it seems as though she has taken a liking to you," his father commented. "She is the only one of her class," Minato said proudly. "She was completely based off of human neural pathways in the brain. Using memories of some of the greatest people of the last century she is empathetic towards humans."

"What does that mean, tou-san?" Naruto asked.

"Meaning she thinks like we do. She is the first TRUE artificial intelligence. Fully cognitive of her situation and surroundings. She truly is one of a kind."

"You flatter me, Namikaze-sama," the AI replied. "If I were organic one would think you were flirting with me," she quipped playfully.

An alarm sounded and Minato raised his wrist up. "It appears it's time for my meeting with the European Robotics Conglomerate's representatives. Please feel free to stay and chat," Minato said leaving the office.

To be continued…?

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So, I can see it already, you guys asking why this stopped so abruptly. Well, the reason is that I started this back in March of 2015 and I recently rediscovered it on my laptop's HHD, like I did with several other story docs that I started but never finished. I lost the original story notes for this and have no idea where I was going with this, hence why it just ends like that; and why the intro's disclaimer is so long as I never re-edited it.

Luckily there are no notes this time around. However, I believe that I do remember the vision that I had for this story when I was coming up with it. I wanted to take Naruto into the 21st century with all the tech and things that we enjoy with none of the godlike powers that is Chakra. Oh, it still would have made an appearance, but it would never have taken the show in this idea.

The reason I even wanted to attempt this idea was that I saw a few modern-day Naruto stories that were quite interesting as well as a single sci-fi one that this was inspired by which seems to have disappeared from the site altogether; which is too bad in my opinion.

But that's all I have for this time around as I'm just archiving an old story idea for possible later use. Let me know what you thought about the idea itself and if you'd like to see this possibility in the future more cleanly planned out like some of my other pilot ideas.

Until next time!