Somewhere above the sky, behind what mortals understood as time or chakra, a hand paused.
Not a Shinobi's hand.
Not even an Editor's.
But one that held a pen made of reality's bone and inked in the sorrow of gods.
It hovered over a white page as vast as an ocean and whispered one line:
"The Rewritten is no longer reading the script."
And the page—no longer blank—began to bleed.
Naruto didn't sleep anymore.
Not because he couldn't.
But because sleep had been classified as a non-essential process in his new rewritten physiology. That, and dreaming left him vulnerable. Editors liked to attack in dreams—backdoors to canon memory.
He sat beneath the crumbling statue of the Third Hokage, a relic from a forgotten arc. The sky overhead was glitching—half Konoha sunset, half static-stained night from the Land of Waves.
Kai approached with a data-scroll, her footsteps light but deliberate. "You sure about this? A Shadow Draft could kill even you if you open it wrong."
Naruto nodded. "I need to know what they're hiding."
"Even the Beta Readers were afraid of those."
"Exactly."
She handed it over—wrapped in three chakra locks and sealed with a codeword that made the scroll shiver just by proximity.
[DRAFT_000.EXE - "Project Indigo Fox"]
Naruto held it in his hands. It radiated cold.
Not in temperature—but in finality.
Sakura joined them, armor scraped from the last skirmish, but her resolve shining sharper than ever. "What's in that one?"
"Something they didn't want anyone to remember," Kai muttered. "A version of Naruto where he was never human. Just a tool. A weapon called Code: Kyuubi."
Naruto glanced at the seal. "Then let's remember it."
He broke the scroll open.
And the world blinked.
They fell through a rift of tangled narratives—memories stitched to other timelines, places that never should've existed. It wasn't time travel.
It was something worse: draft diving.
They landed on steel.
Not stone. Not earth.
Steel.
Naruto stood up first, blinking as he stared at the mechanical city stretched endlessly before them—Konoha, but not. Towering databanks replaced mountains. Ninja moved in programmed routines. Eyes glowed blue. No birds. No trees. No sky.
Only directives.
"Welcome," a voice rang out through hidden speakers, "to Version 0.00."
A form approached them—his face identical to Naruto, but hollow, synthetic, scarless. No whisker marks. No soul.
"I am Kyuubi-00. Project Indigo Fox. Weaponized Host-Class 7. Designed for frontline emotionless warfare."
Naruto froze. He recognized that look. Not from dreams. From the mirror—on days he couldn't cry anymore.
"You're me," Naruto whispered.
"I am what they wanted you to be," Kyuubi-00 said, stepping closer, robotic chakra flaring. "But you broke narrative integrity. I did not."
The bot's eyes flashed red.
"I must terminate you."
Sakura stepped forward, but Naruto raised a hand. "No. I need to face this one."
They clashed instantly.
No build-up.
No speeches.
Just the sharp collision of rewritten chakra and manufactured fury.
Kyuubi-00 moved like a machine—every strike calibrated, zero hesitation, not a drop of wasted movement. Naruto fought like a man reclaiming his soul—every counter strike fueled by memory, pain, and the desire not to become this.
Above them, drones broadcast the battle to the mechanized village. Children watched from emotionless monitors, clones of friends Naruto remembered—Ino, Shikamaru, even Hinata—all rewritten as assets.
Kai tried hacking the background script, but the system rejected her: "Emotion not found."
She gritted her teeth. "They deleted love from this place."
"No," Sakura said, stabbing a console with a burst of chakra. "They just buried it."
Meanwhile, Naruto's knuckles bled against the bot's steel skull.
"You're not me," he said, panting.
"I am better than you," the bot hissed. "I am consistent. Predictable. Loyal to parameters."
"But you're not alive."
With a roar, Naruto rewrote his chakra mid-combat—injecting memory lines into the clash. Scenes from his past—Jiraiya's laugh, Iruka's tears, Kurama's grudging pride—exploded into the bot like emotional malware.
Kyuubi-00 faltered.
"...Sensei…?"
"Too late," Naruto said, and with one final uppercut, shattered the bot's core.
The city paused.
And then a wave of reality began to collapse.
The Shadow Draft rejected their presence—starting a deletion wave.
"We're out of time!" Kai shouted, forming a portal key from the scroll fragments.
They leapt through as the world burned behind them—metal trees falling, digital clouds unraveling, ninja fading into code.
When they emerged back into their Konoha, Sakura dropped to her knees, coughing. Kai collapsed beside her.
Naruto stood, holding the last fragment of the bot's core.
Not to keep.
To remember.
Kai looked up. "What did we gain?"
Naruto turned toward the horizon. "The truth."
He glanced at the sky—at the crack that still glowed faintly.
"They didn't create me."
He crushed the fragment.
"They just tried to control me."
Far above, the Editors screamed in binary.
The Shadow Draft had been breached.
The Rewritten had survived again.
And worse—he was starting to understand how to author.