生き抜くために着込んだ
君だけが見える鎧は
見栄と外聞に怯えた
愚かの果ての現実

光さえ届かない 心の奥の奥には
いくら壊しても壊れない 俺がいる

Current Work:

Time of No Return - My attempt at a realistic Hokage time-traveling story. In response to all the Rokudaime!Naruto variants out there, I tried Yondaime!Minato instead. Despite his reputation, the man was rather ordinary: no inhuman stamina, godlike control, or hax bloodline… It makes his achievements all the more amazing. So, what would happen if he returned? Kage-level knowledge aside, he’d have to restart from scratch. And with how sketchy his canon background was, fabricating/twisting his “past” was quite fun.

Special thanks to my betas, past & present: KyLewin, unkeptsecret, smithjohn2020, QianYun

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Tight Spot - My experiment with Naruto’s people-saving tendencies. Test cover? Uchiha Itachi. Yep, the guy that supposedly slaughtered his entire clan (minus Sasuke) in the name of peace. Still unsure how much of what Madara said could be trusted, but the idea certainly cast Itachi in an entirely different light. At least the image reversal intrigued my muse enough to wonder how Naruto might fare in a similar situation, especially given his declaration of how he viewed Sasuke as more of a brother than Itachi ever did.

Special thanks to my beta: StaplersBreak

Also many thanks to my fan-artists:
03-25-2009: Nios’s cover-art for this story is adapted as my avatar.
04-18-2009: Errant Goat’s fanart for chap 14, scene 3.
05-07-2009: Errant Goat’s sketches for chap 14 (scene 1, scene 2) & chap 15 (scene 1).
06-10-2009: Errant Goat’s fanart for chap 19, scene 1.
10-18-2009: Errant Goat’s fanart for Fukurou.

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Toggle - My response to some reviewers’ comment on Naruto’s OOC-ness in “Tight Spot” (i.e. he seemed to act more ‘Itachi’ than himself). Well, this spurred my muse to speculate just how Itachi might approach a similar challenge. And given the efforts I’ve already made to reconstruct his character & background for Naruto to tear apart in TS, I might as well make full use of them? Certainly, it should be interesting to see how he would deal with the bizarre turn of events in recent canon—his supposed care for Sasuke notwithstanding.

Current Progress:

09-26-2012: Yay, I finally dumped the drafts & rewrote a brand new chapter?