Tome of the Orange Sky (Naruto/MGLN)

Prologue

The Tome of the Orange Sky would have despaired if it were still capable of emotion as it fell to the planet below it. Humans inhabited the planet despite the lack of natural satellites, but even from orbit it was obvious that they didn't have access to magic. There were others that did, but the humans did not. Coupled with the low reserves the device had and the damage it had suffered it was going to be lucky if it survived landing at all. A rudimentary heat shield was formed anyway, as the Tome's self-preservation routines demanded.

A landing area devoid of humans was chosen so as to not cause any harm upon the crash landing to come, though there were only two options with the limited ability to control its approach. None of the areas where the non-human magic users resided were within reach, and far more options would have been available had its Lord survived with it, but those sadly weren't the case. And on a planet far from home where humans had no magic it was unlikely that it would ever have a Lord again.

It would probably have been a mercy for the Tome to have been destroyed, but it survived its impact with the ground. Buried deeply and embedded in rock, but it had survived. Five minutes later it powered down, the last of its reserves spent. Encased in a void in the rock, protected by a heated and compressed shell around it, deep enough to be unlikely to be found by anyone. In many ways a suitable final resting place where it was unlikely to be disturbed.

But if that were the end of the story then we wouldn't be here.

A few decades later a meteorite delivered a seed to another area of the planet, and a visitor came shortly after to ensure that the seed took root and to spread legends among the humans. They then left, and over the next thousand years a tree grew from that seed. Seemingly bringing life to the land, it was actually working to drain it. Once fully grown it started on the next stage of things, and another thousand years later it finally bore a single, solitary fruit. The legends had been well crafted, and the humans dared not attempt to even approach the fruit.

The details of the events that followed are unimportant in their specifics. When the major ones were over there was no longer a tree, a new artificial satellite was pretending to be a natural one in orbit around the planet, and life on the planet was forever changed to generate and depend on an energy that was referred to as 'chakra'.

If you could have asked the Tome what this 'chakra' was, it would tell you that it was an oddly restricted form of what it called 'mana' and that its spread meant that the humans could now be thought of as a form of mage.

Eventually a village would form over the place that the Tome had been buried, and work by various individuals and groups constructing hidden areas under the village would push the Tome gradually upwards as a side effect. Eventually ending up just out of reach inside of a cave, it would sit there until a training accident caused the cave to partially collapse. It wasn't considered an important cave though, so nobody bothered to check it further.

Three days later it was raining heavily, and a young blond boy in poorly-maintained clothing was locked out of the orphanage he had grown up in. Seeking a safe place to spend the night, he found his way through the village to the cave and ended up crawling past some of the rubble to a dry area inside of it. Too young to be able to make a fire to keep himself warm, he was only kept healthy enough thanks to the force of nature sealed within him.

Though many would eventually search for him, the rain and the delay in beginning the search would make it nearly impossible to locate him until he returned to the village proper on his own. There would be no panic over this though, as it had happened before and would be expected to happen again. But this time things were going to be different.

While the boy had fallen asleep without ever noticing the damaged Tome in the rubble next to him, the Tome had not missed the excess energy he was putting out. That energy was enough to wake the device up, rousing it from what could have been its final resting place. Still heavily damaged, it decided that the one that had woken it up was now its new Lord and established a connection.

What it found was enough oddly-corrupted mana to enact all the repairs it needed to, but also that its new Lord had a horribly split Linker Core with several odd limiting nets of sorts wrapped around them. Depending on how the automated routines looked at things it was in anything from two to five pieces, separated by odd formations of mana and linked to what looked like they could be parasites as well. With limited intelligence due to the damage it had sustained, and an unfortunate lack of surviving uncorrupted backups of its own, the Tome defaulted to devoting more resources to ensuring that its Lord was healthy than to repairing itself.

This would have gone more smoothly had it retained a non-corrupt medical database backup. Over the next two days the boy would be nearly killed several times. Pushing the fractured pieces of linker core into something resembling a coherent whole had first required pulling out the odd structures keeping the pieces apart, only to find out that those structures had somehow been linked to others that contained more pieces of core. The Tome had no clue where they'd come from or how to begin describing the direction they'd arrived from.

Then two of the pieces seemed to jointly have a collection of mana linked to them, and pulling all of that in had nearly burnt out the relevant portions of the Tome's hardware. It had almost seemed like some of it had been locked away somehow. Then there were the 'limiting nets' that on closer examination while removing them from each piece appeared to be some kind of automatic processing setup that was incomplete and poorly-assembled. A properly-assembled and completed version did turn out to be perfect for holding the various bits of core together.

Once all of that was done the Tome was further surprised when the fractured core pulsed, recombined, and flooded the child's body with mana. It had no context for the resulting warping of the child's body, but was able to determine that whatever the cause it was stable without the healing systems present in the Tome helping. The altered features of the child were thus likely fine, though figuring out how to integrate them into the corrupted medical database was going to take some processing time.

During this the Tome had more slowly worked on its own repairs, while also examining the separated possible-parasites to see if they contained anything of use. Three of those turned out to be full personalities with memories, somehow preserved in the mana, and useful for restoring functionality that the corrupted backups couldn't. Two of the three were already predisposed to care for the new Lord, only the third needed tweaking to ensure that it would be helpful. Once that was accomplished the three were booted up to help direct things further.

Despite wanting to do more for the child, restoring full functionality of the Tome was deemed more important. In part because until that was done there wasn't much more to do to help the child. Some energy was used to shape the rubble of the cave to keep the child from being found before they were ready, and then proper repairs began. It would take another three days before the Tome was repaired, though likely still missing quite a few capabilities from what it once had. It took the form of a spiral pendant on a chain around the child's neck for the duration, the standby form chosen by one of the personalities being used to conserve power while the internal repairs were completed.

Things had not been going well for Hiruzen over the past few days. It had started with the weather, torrential rain causing all kinds of problems on its own. The village had ground to a near halt as nobody wanted to go outside at all, but they had far too many things going on to actually shut down for a week. Including, but not limited to, ensuring that they weren't flooded out by keeping the water flowing where needed.

Two days into the storm he'd then been informed by two over-zealous jounin that were going out to train for hours every day despite the weather that three different training grounds were flooded, but more important was that a fourth had sprung a sinkhole instead. It appeared that one of the many tunnels under the village had cracked open, and an initial check showed that it was an old disused one that had long since collapsed at either end. But now it, and any connected sections, needed to be shored up or filled in. Something that he had sent teams to investigate before a sinkhole opened up under someone's house.

The following day someone looking for old blueprints had discovered that several storage scrolls had exploded, spreading weapons all over one of the vaults. Their index tags were destroyed, so a manual scan of the entire vault to determine which index numbers weren't present was now being done while collecting the weapons and checking for other damage. There had to be a good reason for those weapons to have been stored, but what that reason was hadn't been obvious from looking at them.

Three days ago another old tunnel had caused problems with another sinkhole by the orphanage, necessitating sending teams to both reinforce the tunnel and ensure that the building itself wasn't damaged. Given that it was the orphanage that had ended up also including several trusted Anbu to ensure that this wasn't some kind of staged attempt to gain easy access to any of the orphans with potentially 'useful' heritages, including but not limited to Naruto. On top of the normal guard rotation, of course.

Two days ago a sign of the state of things was that he'd actually cleared the paperwork from his desk due to how little was coming in. Admittedly, he knew there would be a flood of things once the rain stopped, but he had attempted to enjoy the feeling of having a clear desk. Sadly, Danzo had taken advantage of the lack of legitimate distractions to make another attempt at getting Naruto and a couple of other unnamed but likely-important orphans into Root. Homura and Koharu had taken Hiruzen's side this time, but it had eaten up the entire afternoon.

Yesterday even Might Guy had given up on training outside, shifting to an indoor routine now that you needed water-walking to move through any of the training grounds, and Danzo had been stopped from coming by for more discussions by the Root primary base starting to flood. The Merchants' Council had met and discussed possible measures for the coming couple of days before the rain was expected to end as well as what needed to happen afterwards, but the Council of Clans had decided to wait until the rain had let up to meet.

And today the emergency paperwork from the rain had taken five minutes. Hiruzen was considering just taking the rest of the day off unless someone summoned him for something urgent, maybe spend some extra time with his grandson? Visiting the orphanage while teams were looking for tunnels and damage would just be a distraction, after all. Though they had finally found out that the stored weapons had been from the two attacks of the nine-tailed fox, meaning that the beast's latent chakra had probably been weakening them and they hadn't noticed. The seals for the older set had been replaced twice before now, though he couldn't recall anyone reporting feeling the beast's chakra in the weapons when finding them...

He was interrupted from his musing by one of his Anbu barging into the office. That this was Inu giving off a sense of mild panic just meant that the normal focus generated by any Anbu barging into the office was heightened. "Report."

Inu sounded furious as he spoke. "Naruto was locked out of the orphanage at the start of the storm and hasn't been seen since. I only discovered that something was wrong when I realized that he wasn't at breakfast while a potential problem in the meal hall was being looked at."

And now Hiruzen was equally, if not more furious, but he kept his killing intent constrained for the moment. Inu and his personal guards didn't deserve his ire, after all. But before any orders could be given, Jiraiya barged in through the window.

"Where's Naruto?" the sage asked, looking and sounding panicked.

A proverbial boulder formed in Hiruzen's stomach. There was no way that this was unrelated, especially with the storage scroll incident, and Jiraiya wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the village for months. "Inu just finished informing me that he's missing. What happened?"

"Geratora was nearly killed by the key to the seal exploding and Bunta told me that the Great Toad Sage claimed that the death of the fox had shattered the future before passing out. Naruto was also supposedly still in the village then, but that was all that was passed on."

To the credit of the guards, one of them didn't even wait for orders before signaling that they would summon all the trackers and vacating the office.

Kushina knew that she was just a personality interface in the Tome of the Orange Sky now, but she was still what was left of Naruto's mother as well. They'd pulled him into the limited simulation interface, which currently served as something like the device's 'mindscape'. He looked remarkably like a mini-Minato, provided you could get past the Uzumaki-red fox ears and tail. And the little fangs, though she knew that the whiskers were less 'new' and more 'enhanced from the former markings that all children of the jinchuriki bear'.

The Tome's healing and Naruto's further-enhanced resilience couldn't keep him alive forever though, so he needed to return to the village. But to do that he needed to hide the changes he'd gone through, which meant waking him up to teach him how to shapeshift. They knew he should be able to, but weren't sure how much time it would take to teach him. But she didn't want to wake him up from his peaceful slumber, simulated head resting on her simulated lap.

"Wake up kit," Kurama spat out, slapping Naruto with a tail. Kushina scowled at the fox's avatar, only to get back a feeling of the thing not giving a shit. "He needs to get moving before he dies, and the idiots will kill him on sight if they see him with his fox features. Loathe as I am to have him hide them, he's going to have to for now."

"Wha?" Naruto said, having sat up and started rubbing his eyes.

"We have a lot to talk about," Kushina said, rubbing his head a little. "But we need to teach you to look like what others expect you to look like first."

Her little boy looked around the clearing they were seemingly sitting in. Minato had decided to leave it to her and Kurama for the moment and was instead working on a training plan as a distraction from wanting to burn down the village. She felt similarly, but they also knew that something else had to be going on and that Hiruzen appeared to be trying to do the right thing, so they were reserving their judgment. For now.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Kushina smiled sadly and tugged on his tail. "I'm your mother, but you were hurt and if someone sees you with your new tail then they will try to harm you."

It was cute seeing him try to process that he had a tail, and they ended up manifesting a mirror for him to look at himself in. Kurama then took the lead in teaching shapeshifting, being the only one of the three personalities that had any experience with it at all. Sure, they all knew what the others knew because they were all the Tome, but knowing something and understanding it from experience were different things. She wasn't prepared to try to explain any of Kurama's or Minato's skills to Naruto, and they were largely unprepared to explain hers.

Though they all agreed that solid clones were going to be included as soon as Naruto could manage them. Kushina had needed those before Kurama had been placed inside of her and couldn't imagine that Naruto's now-enhanced reserves were going to make him any different, even if those reserves were simply high for an Uzumaki instead of Kurama's level. Besides, being able to be in multiple places at once always made for an excellent alibi, especially if you kept that you could do so secret. She'd gotten away with so many pranks before others had discovered that particular detail...

Jiraiya looked over Naruto, who had been found nearly sealed in a cave thanks to what had obviously been an earth jutsu of some kind a couple hours previous. They'd ensured that he was fed, and boy could he eat, and had been examined by a medic-nin. He was surprisingly healthy given what had likely happened to him and his story was sadly lacking in useful details.

Not that the story wasn't concerning in its own way. Jiraiya had listened to his godson tell a tale of neglect and being locked out of the orphanage before a storm, only to find a recently-collapsed cave to sleep in. Then he'd supposedly met his mother and a talking fox before he was found. If the fox hadn't had multiple tails and the description of his mother hadn't been a dead ringer for Kushina then they'd have likely dismissed some of that as a dream, but given those details...

Then, of course, there was the complete lack of a seal, or any sign of one having existed. A blood test had confirmed that this was Naruto, though the rudimentary chakra test they could do on a child had been less solidly conclusive. But the previous tests had been tainted by the presence of the fox's chakra, so that was honestly expected. The kid was still an Uzumaki and a Namikaze, everything said he was his parents' child, and impossibly he was no longer the container for a tailed beast.

If not for still having to worry about Minato's enemies Jiraiya would be taking the kid out of the village with him. Sadly, those enemies still existed and the changed circumstances didn't actually do anything about them. But it was also obvious that the orphanage couldn't be trusted, which was why the staff were currently being gone over by T&I, so Naruto was going to need to move out. He was just old enough to mostly look over himself with some added supervision, and that one apartment block that the Uzumaki clan technically owned had a few open apartments right now. Jiraiya could personally fund a long-term mission set to keep an eye on the kid for the next few years easily enough, and Hiruzen would ensure that those assigned to the mission could actually be trusted.

Though the apartment would be getting enough added security seals to make a tailed beast have second thoughts about attacking it, on top of the seals already placed on the building itself by Uzumaki of the past. Sure, it would make it harder for Anbu to slip in unnoticed, but the two squads formerly tasked with keeping Naruto safe that were also in T&I's hands made it obvious that they needed to be more closely monitored too.

And then there was the cover story for what had happened, because admitting that the fox was dead was...unwise. The other villages would see that as a weakness, which would also put Naruto at greater risk. It would need to be something believable though, so required careful thought.

The rain had finally let up, flooding had been dealt with, the weapon had been found and was secure once more, and Danzo was trying to figure out why Hiruzen had called an emergency meeting of the Council of Clans, Merchants' Council, and the Advisors' Council. At the same time. Sure, the orphanage staff and some Anbu had proven to be less loyal to the village than they'd have liked, but that didn't feel important enough and the flooding hadn't done enough damage or revealed enough forgotten tunnels to be this level of concern.

Admittedly, something had happened with the weapon that Hiruzen had kept secret enough to still not be known, but whatever it was would almost certainly be kept far quieter than such a meeting would imply. Including the civilians at all would be insane for something of that level of importance.

"I apologize for the delay," Hiruzen said as he and his Anbu guard entered. It only took a moment for him to take his place, looking over the room. "I have called you all here to inform you of several things. Least importantly, four caretakers from the orphanage have been executed for crimes against the village, as have three Anbu and two medic-nin. Active jounin can check the archives for reasoning, should they wish to know the details. Two other caretakers were relieved of their duties, feel free to spread the word that replacement caretakers are being sought."

There was some murmuring about that, and notes taken. But what concerned Danzo was that this didn't warrant the meeting at all.

"To move on to slightly more important matters," Hiruzen continued, producing a storage seal and removing a stack of paper from it. "The residents of three areas on the outskirts of the village are being evacuated due to forgotten tunnels that threaten their homes. This includes a couple of businesses that need to be relocated and impacts two clan training areas."

Ah. That was just enough to warrant calling the meeting to begin with, and Danzo relaxed a bit as the details were distributed. One had to pander to the masses and Hiruzen personally informing the combined councils of this was a show that he respected them, just part of the many games one had to play when running a hidden village.

The paperwork provided included full information on where families and businesses were being relocated to, as well as what training areas were going to need to be looked at by the clans in question. It was also devoid of the security details regarding the tunnels and what uses they had once had, where known, which was also fully expected. Those who had clearance to know could find out by visiting the archives themselves, and Danzo would do so in the coming days. No need to rush to check as the information wasn't going anywhere and he had nothing planned in that area of the village right now anyway.

"Finally," Hiruzen said, startling them all. "We come to the reason that I called this meeting, now that the trivial matters have been dealt with. Despite my law, a large portion of the village has become aware that Naruto Uzumaki is the jinchuriki of the nine-tailed fox. I can only assume that knowledge becoming so widespread is responsible for an unknown enemy finding out. Luckily for us, the truth runs far deeper, but one of our most important deceptions has now been revealed. A few days ago an unknown individual attempted to take advantage of the boy being locked out of the orphanage to take the fox, only to break the decoy seal and find that he did not hold the fox after all. Whoever this was appears to have fled upon discovering this, leaving the boy in the cave used for the attempt."

"I'm sorry," the Nara head said after a moment of stunned silence. "Did you just say that Uzumaki was merely a decoy? That the true container of the nine-tailed fox is someone else?"

"Yes. The actual identity of the container is still a very well-kept secret, and will remain one. Only those already aware of it are permitted to know. That said, now that the secret is out we no longer have to fear Naruto breaking the decoy seal accidentally and I will personally be assigning him tutors to ensure that he's ready to enter the academy in the fall. His natural chakra reserves are too great to ignore and were part of why he was originally chosen to be the decoy in the first place. To better facilitate this training, he will be moving out of the orphanage into an apartment of his own and gradually taught to take full care of himself over the coming few years. Until then there will be ongoing missions for teams to keep an eye on him, in addition to four other orphans being put through the same program."

Danzo had no idea what to think about this. He'd never even heard so much as a discredited hint of a rumor that there was any other possible container, and a glance at Homura and Koharu was all he needed to tell that they were just as shocked as he was. If Hiruzen could pull a ruse like this off, right under their noses...

Perhaps his old rival wasn't nearly as soft as he appeared on the surface. A bait and switch of this magnitude, and to allow the ruse to go on for years despite knowing how the village had been gradually poisoned against the boy implied a hidden hardness that Danzo had to respect. In fact, without the accidental reveal it might have gone on for well over a decade before circumstances would have forced a reveal!

Of course, then there was the problem that the actual weapon was...completely and totally unknown. A secret so well kept that it would still be a secret if not for mistakes that had been subtly encouraged...and it was only now obvious why Hiruzen had actually been so against putting the boy through early training. This 'decoy seal' probably needed regular adjustments as the boy grew and would only have been stable enough for chakra use at the same time most children could safely start to use chakra in the first place.

Worse, the real container was probably already being trained in secret to be loyal to Hiruzen and his ideals, meaning that Danzo had absolutely no hope of ensuring primary loyalty to him. It was a move of a master, demonstrating just how well out-played they'd all been.

Minato found himself pleasantly surprised at the level of protection and privacy the seals around Naruto's apartment provided, and knew that Kushina was pleased that their son had ended up in her own old apartment. Kurama was most amused by Naruto playing around with shapeshifting and taking on a female form that looked remarkably like a younger Kushina. Something that, after minor thought, they'd decided would be a great way to help promote infiltration skills.

They'd added teaching Kushina's old lessons about being a shrine maiden, forced on her by Mito before passing Kurama along, to the plans for training Naruto. In a couple of years Naruto could use that form to 'move into' and 'fix up' the shrine near the apartment that served as one of the hidden entrances to the Uzumaki compound. Something that Minato had never known in life, as Kushina had never shared that secret with him. Mostly because he'd insisted that he didn't need to know all of the Uzumaki secrets, wanting her to be the one to share them with their children.

It would be nice if Naruto could live a simple life, but he had inherited far too many enemies and they knew that there may be greater enemies out there thanks to Kurama's memories. At the same time, the Tome had a number of things that would help keep him safe. The 'Knight Armor' spell had the potential to protect him from far more than normal ninja wear just to start. If Naruto could handle one of the three flight spells then he would have mobility far greater than most as well. Add in the ranged options that the various bullets provided and the utility of the search spell and you'd have a fairly dangerous individual. It was just too bad that more spells hadn't survived, the set available was essentially the 'starter pack' and there had to have been far more picked up later.

Then again, that was all before you added in all of the ninja techniques, those that Kushina and Minato knew as well as any that Naruto could develop or get his hands on later. Sealing was definitely a must too, with the Tome already having spotted patterns that Minato had never considered that could improve a number of seals. Kurama had actually been the one to propose a shapeshifting seal that Naruto's future teammates could possibly take advantage of as well, though that needed some development time to figure out. Assuming it was possible, of course, and it had started as grumbling that being able to get down to human size would've been nice for him and his siblings to blend in...and eliminate the Uchiha, technically.

"You have to keep us and the Tome secret for now," Kushina explained, having told Naruto about some of his past. She'd left out a few details for now, given his young age, and he looked ready to object. But she put her finger to his lips to stop him. "Think of it as practice for the secrets you'll need to keep once you become a shinobi. If you can't keep your own secrets then how can anyone expect you to keep someone else's?"

Naruto pouted, which looked far too cute on his now-'natural' fox-like face. "But they make fun of me for not having a mom and dad."

Minato sighed. "There's no way for them to meet us because we're not alive anymore. You've gotten a wonderful gift in being able to speak with us in this way, but we can only interact with you properly in this false world."

"If you make friends you know you can trust then you can tell them about us," Kushina added. "But I doubt that you'll be able to be sure that you can trust them for a few years."

"You'll also need to keep your true skills hidden, at least until you're strong enough that it won't matter. Otherwise someone might decide that they don't like how strong you're getting and go after you before you're ready."

Surprisingly, Naruto nodded at that one. "Like Masaru?"

"Er, maybe? I'm not familiar with Masaru."

"He showed off and the evil lord sent the sword guys to kill him before he got too strong."

That...sounded like it came from a story intended for children, and seemed to provide a good lesson. "Yes, then. You want to look like you're average, instead of exceptional, because future enemies are likely to ignore those that are simply 'average'."

"But pulling pranks that nobody knows you pulled is a great way to show off what you can really do," Kushina added with a grin. "It's also a tradition and a great way to get people back without them being able to blame you. At least if you do things right."

Unsaid was that getting to and maintaining that level of pranking was training in and of itself. Something that Minato hadn't fully appreciated while he was alive, but having access to Kushina's memories could see the appeal of now. Especially as it would provide a largely-harmless outlet for their frustration with the village, once Naruto had the skills needed to pull off decent pranks at all.