Sakura elbowed them both. "The village will be fine. The takeout budget, though..."
Shikamaru tapped the screen. An image appeared—a masked figure, lean and fast, with a tattered cloak and a single crimson eye glowing through a cracked ANBU mask. The symbol on their back wasn't a village insignia. It was a zero.
"I am your second version. Your V-2 . And I've come to ask you a question: When you became Hokage, did you ever feel... incomplete?" Uzumaki Naruto -V.2- NZC
Naruto's fists clenched. "You're a clone."
Konoha had rebuilt. Skyscrapers of steel and chakra-conductive alloy now rose alongside the old Hokage Monument. Tech-nin—shinobi-engineers—had fused sealing arrays with digital networks. The new generation called it the Shinobi Cloud . Naruto called it a headache. Sakura elbowed them both
V-2 descended slowly. Up close, the differences were clearer. Their cloak was patched with fuinjutsu tags. Their right arm was bandaged from elbow to fingertip, glowing faintly blue—synthetic chakra veins.
"What's the Zero Code, Shikamaru?"
"I'm already pumping chakra into them," Kurama growled in his mind. "They're synthetic. I can stabilize, but not for long. You need a seal."
"That's... one way to put it."