A/N: "The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written."

— John Dufresne

This past year has been a new experience for me. I never thought I'd get to write anything, especially not something that could receive so much love from so many people. The reviews I got over this past year all motivated me to write down this idea I thought up a long time ago. The criticisms helped me shape that idea and give it more depth and details.

Thus, I find that it is owed to you, my readers, that I write down the best version of this story that I can.

I've lost count of how many times I reread this work, and I have noticed several issues with it, many of which have been helpfully pointed out by reviewers, even those who didn't necessarily like the fic or ended up dropping it.

So I thank you for your help.

This rewrite has several goals:

Brush up the character interactions.

Link up the many details of the worldbuilding.

Fix plotlines that felt forced or doomed to fail.

I'm still not done with the rewrite. It took me a long time just to get the rough plan of the story right on a draft sheet.

Here's how things'll work. I will update this fic weekly with the chapters I've fully finished rewriting.

Then, after I run out of written chapters, I will proceed with no set update schedule. BUT! I will be posting the reading chapters some days after the rewritten chapter.

This means that you'll regretfully have to wait, but I'm not the kind of guy to write down an entire work and then post it.

P.S.: Note that the first few chapters might be extremely similar to the old fic. The difference becomes more notable after chapter 5.

Many thanks to my co-writers, mirxae and Sandai Kagami! (also euphoric image for offering his input here and there and being a patient person with me, thanks)

Without further Ado!

Chapter 1: Father and Son

"I've never fully believed in his existence, for I thought it was nothing more than a Myth. A Man who walked the earth before the gods themselves? Surely it must be a jest! For that sounds the furthest away from a Man!"

"But alas I was proven wrong! For we were one day visited by a Man who resembled the one described in the ancient texts. Hair that looked to be woven from gold, eyes that resembled the Sun itself, and a body that surpassed any warrior's."

"If that were not enough, the Man had the audacity to empty our entire supply of flour! And for what else but his own personal meal? Preposterous! Inconceivable!"

"And what even is this Ramen he spoke so highly of?"

~~ Testimony of a scribe of a rural Chinese village, 4900 B-C ~~

From "Tales of the Great Sage" by Professor Fujino Yasuhiro.

There were virtually no creatures, apart from the oldest primordials who could recall the Age of Shinobi, a period that preceded the Golden Age of Humanity and succeeded the First Age. The Age of Shinobi has long been considered the briefest era of world history, lasting only a few centuries as opposed to eons or millennia.

It began with the Sage of the Sixth Paths bestowing the gift of Chakra onto humanity and ended with a mass extinction event triggered by Gaia.

None but a few beings out there could remember the exact sequence of events, but rumor has it start with a war that engulfed the world and shook the continents. It was a period that blurred the lines between 'godhood' and 'mortality', where multiple men and women amassed so much power they would have been able to stand toe to toe with many of today's gods.

But among all these powerhouses, a lone being stood off from the rest of the earthly creatures. *

A figure known by many names, the most famous of which would be "The Gallant Sage of the East".

Despite the abundance of records detailing his sightings and interactions with men and women throughout human history, he was a cryptid even among the higher plane.

None but the Primordials and the elder deities of the more powerful pantheons could ascertain his existence nowadays.

It does create a sense of paranoia among them, the thought of a being with so much power left unchecked was worrying. Who knows what such a creature could be planning? What sort of evil machinations could they be concocting?

Chiba Prefecture, Japan, Spring of 2000

...

Sluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp

Crunch crunch

…

"Hey, Pops?"

"Yeah Son?"

"I'm bored- Wait! WAIT! Don't you dare!"

"Hi, Bored… I'm Dad"

"UGGHHHHHH"

Sluuuuuuurp

A couple sat in a seiza position on top of a cliff overlooking the sea.

Well...one was sitting, the other was writhing in what appeared to be physical pain on the ground.

The tallest was a blond man, holding a hot ceramic bowl of Ramen in his calloused hands and using chopsticks to inhale the noodles at an almost inhuman pace. His whiskered cheeks were puffed out while his eyes were closed in bliss, making the man resemble a fox.

Despite his seemingly non-threatening appearance, his body spoke of a different matter entirely. As he knocked the bowl back to drink the still-steaming broth, the shirt he was wearing hiked up, showing a toned stomach decorated by red flame-like orange markings. The same markings went over his muscular arms in a manner resembling some sort of tribal body paint.

As he was done with his meal, the bowl disappeared in his left hand in a puff of smoke while a similar bowl appeared in his right hand, which the man proceeded to attack with the same vigor.

He did not seem the least bit disturbed with how his lunchmate was acting and continued to consume the noodly goodness with enthusiasm.

Sluuuuuuurp

His companion, however, looked less human. The average person would probably mistake them for an imp because of their small stature, a little under three feet, and their midnight black complexion, partially covered by a child-sized green yukata.

The little creature was barely getting back together from the reflexive disgust it felt towards the terrible attempt at humor and looked back for the whole fried chicken it had been munching on. Shrugging, it took a bite out of it, consuming both meat and bones in one go.

It then looked up at the one they called 'Pops', the large yellow dots that served as its eyes being filled with curiosity. It finished swallowing the food before opening its glasgow-like mouth to speak.

"Sooooo...what should we do today?"

Gulp

The blond loudly swallowed the handful of noodles he had shoved in his mouth before shifting his own strange set of eyes onto the creature.

A pair of blue eyes with a central golden ring gazed upon the one that the man considered his son.

"Meh… I'm up for anything you want" he replied nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders before continuing his meal.

His son scratched his horned head in thought, removing the large cone hat he wore in the process and revealing his moss-colored hair.

The smaller male contemplated their next course of action. It has been a few decades since anything exciting happened in the world, ever since the end of World War II, Asia did have a few skirmishes here and there that occupied the duo but nothing as major as the Great War.

He wouldn't complain about peace, as moderate as it was, because that seemed like something his own father yearned for.

But he still wished for something to do.

They had already been all over the world, traveling most of the continents for millennia in search of adventure and great foodstuffs. However, the blond had insisted on staying in the Far East for the last few centuries.

Naruto N. Uzumaki was strong, perhaps one of the strongest beings on the planet. There was little in the world that he felt apprehension towards.

Well, anything not truly Omnipotent that is.

'I'm strong too, not as much as Pops obviously, but I can hold my own and if push comes to shove, I'll just call for help' the shorter of the duo thought.

There had to be a sensible reason for his father's decision but for the life of him, he couldn't think about anything.

Maybe it was his own apathy towards most living creatures that weren't his family or those he considered precious, but there was simply no valid excuse for them not to do whatever they wanted.

'After all, who's gonna stop us?'

"You know… I've been getting sick of Japan and Asia in general, we traveled everywhere here! And yeah, the dishes are great and all, the people too… sometimes...but I just wanted some more variety… Why can't we visit Europe again? Or the Americas?" asked the little guy.

Naruto sighed, putting his empty bowl down and gazing upon the sea in thought.

"It's… complicated"

"Well make it not complicated" The son crossed his arms and rumbled to which the blond raised an eyebrow at the lip.

"Little sassy guy aren't you?" Naruto asked, making Zetsu wince and grumble under his breath.

"A good way to put it is… I can't afford to go there anymore"

"How? You're stronger than ever, Pops!" the green-haired young man almost screamed in exasperation.

"That's just it, Zetsu! I'm too strong! Do you realize how threatened my very presence makes people feel? Let alone beings who can actually sense my power?" the blond explained and gestured widely.

At Zetsu's incredulous gaze, he decided to elaborate.

"What do you think happens when someone unfamiliar with us meets either of us?"

The short male scratched his head "They'd, umm... flee?"

Naruto shook his head "While that may true for weak creatures like most humans and monsters, it's another story when it comes to deities or beings of a higher power, especially those with too much pride for their own good"

Zetsu tilted his head as he listened to his father.

"Most of those beings would see me as a threat, regardless of my intentions. And what do you think they'd do if I entered their zones of influence? Let me prance around?" He questioned his son who nodded his head in understanding.

"No they wouldn't, many of them would start blasting before asking questions, regardless of where I was, and how many do you think will die before they listen to reason?" Naruto continued.

"You've never truly experienced it because of your own ability to suppress yourself, but me? This is all I had to deal with for the first few thousand years of my life! If it weren't for that bullshit with Okhwang and his gaggle of megalomaniacs, I wouldn't have garnered- what do the kids call it these days? Ah yeah! A street rep! Your old man wouldn't have any of that rep!" the man grumbled in irritation.

Zetsu simply nodded in understanding.

"Besides, you know we only really stay here because of Ama-chan's influence. If it weren't for my darling ray of sunshine, we'd have to have stayed in Oraeguk."

Zetsu again nodded, thinking deeply on it.

'It really makes sense when I think about it. Pops and Uncle Kurama alone are some of the top dogs out there so there's really nothing to fear. Plus everyone in Asia sort of keeps their distance from us.'

Naruto had forged many friendships among the supernatural in the Eastern hemisphere, some of them strong enough to be considered a Pantheonic Threat like he himself was.

He had a pull here that he lacked in the other parts of the globe, especially in the West.

Zetsu heard and read a lot of bad things about the so-called "gods" dominating the Western hemisphere.

Be it Zeus' vindictiveness and paranoia, Odin's similar but more calculative personality, or even Ra's wishy-washy demeanor.

But compared to their power base?

There really wasn't anything the western pantheons could pull that would catch them flat-footed. They had too much raw power to be challenged. But that doesn't mean any of the pantheons would be cowed into non-violence. They had too much pride and too little care for anything they considered below them.

Or that's what he assumed at least. One could never be too careful with those. They'd already made that mistake once before.

In the end, Naruto wasn't afraid to fight them, but any fight he might get into could become both bloody and destructive, delivering crippling damage to both the environment and the people.

Something that he, as a Sage, cannot allow himself to do.

But Zetsu found himself racking his brain for another argument. He didn't personally care as much as his father for any potential consequences their presence could cause, but he had thought up a way to prevent those scenarios and he hoped Naruto would agree.

"I mean… we don't have to announce ourselves y'know? I could use err… y'know...that new technique" the little guy tried to convince his father.

"Hmm? You mean that one you've been working on? What did you call it?" The man scratched his whiskered cheek in thought.

"[Mole in Plain Sight]" Zetsu spoke with a level of pride. The technique had been his pet project for quite a while and one that could offer up a solution for their dilemma.

It was a similar skill to one used by a warrior of the Old World, one that his father fought in the past.

The Second Tsuchikage's [Dustless Bewildering Cover] hid the user's presence and chakra (or energy signature) completely from other shinobi or warriors in general. Zetsu initially wanted to take it a step further, and completely erase the user from everyone's radar, including 'all-seeing' beings like the astral or sky deities of multiple pantheons.

Failing to accomplish that goal, Zetsu opted to shift his objective from erasing one's presence to blending it with the surroundings. The technique was powered purely by Senjutsu, which he and his father were both masters of. Nature chakra would constantly coat the body in a thin 'opaque' layer while sending a 'Mist' of diluted chakra in the area surrounding the user. Nature chakra would act as a masking agent for the other kinds of energy within the body, thus making it seem as if the user was made of pure Senjutsu, or pass him off as a nature spirit.

All things considered, that sounded like an easy task for both of them.

The problem, however...

"I got it down but I still have an issue. The technique depends on the user's concentration. You have to be constantly focusing on it to maintain it, this means that any lapse of focus could land us in the crosshairs of any supernatural being with a sensing capability" Explained Zetsu, while Naruto gained a surprised look followed by a proud one.

"You finished it? THAT'S MY BOY! Bahahahaa!" The blond father laughed joyously as he scooped up his child and held him up, much to the son's annoyance.

After all, that was an achievement of the highest order! Hiding their power from other deities was near impossible, if they made themselves invisible to the eye with a technique, they could still be detected by powerful sensors. Simply walking into a pantheon whose authority they had no positive relations with was out of the question, especially if what he heard about those 'gods' in the Americas was true.

His son however was ironically like a sponge - 'Heh get it? Because he was half-plant' -, he simply absorbed information and thought up unpredictable ways to use it. Quite outside-the-box like himself at his age, but his boy was also a born genius.

That was far from the first technique he invented but Naruto still felt a swell of Fatherly Pride(TM) every time his boy made such discoveries.

Ah but Zetsu's problem was a pretty big one, still…

Old as he was, Naruto was still Naruto, meaning he was just as hyperactive as those 'demigods' peppering the world were, and thus could never give all his focus to a single task for too long.

Especially considering the technique will need to stay active when they inevitably go to sleep for the night.

Sure he could force himself to stay awake the entire time, but he liked to sleep! It gave him some modicum of serenity.

So, staying completely hidden was a no-go, but then again, did they really have to?

Naruto has been alive for eons, he had more than enough time to become the Master of Masters of the Shinobi arts, especially the Art of Fuinjutsu, the knowledge behind Jutsu Shikis, and even some of the western and nordic runes.

The idea came to him almost instantly: A Seal to act as a nature chakra battery with a multi-layered runic circuit with some Jutsu Shiki sprinkled here and there, all to act as both a chakra filter and a circuit around the body.

The blond narrowed his eyes in contemplation, ignoring his son's thrashing as the boy attempted to escape the hold of his captor's Fatherly Pride(TM).

'Now all I need to do is put the idea into practice, hmmmm-OUCH' Naruto yelped as Zetsu finally had enough and opted to use his powerful teeth to bite at his father's arms.

"LET ME DOWN POPS!"

"NOT UNTIL YOU LEARN TO ACCEPT MY FATHERLY AFFECTION(TM)!"

"ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TRADEMARKING THIS?!"

"SCREW YOU I'M THE BEST DAD IN THE WORLD I CAN TRADEMARK FATHERHOOD ITSELF! Besides…"

"Oh No…"

"I wouldn't be much of a Patent if I wasn't the best I could be eh? Get it?"

"UGHHHHHHHHHHH"

A/N: RR!

(Also got a Ko-fi, if you wanna give me a bit of encouragement).