Ooh, boy. Some of you have asked on whether or not I would keep going with this and I'm here to finally tell you that I will no longer be continuing this story. When I started this so long ago I had just finished my first playthrough of CoD: Black Ops. I loved Reznov in that game. And the twist at the end, the fact that he had been dead all that time…it got my mind racing. And at the time, I was really into Naruto. I had been a reader on this site for a year or two beforehand and figured that I might as well give a shot at it. You have no idea how excited I was when I saw just how many people were reading my work!

It had lit a fire in me that I had rarely felt before. And so, I did my best to pump out chapter after chapter, and as I continued I began to realize just how out my depth I was. The original version of this story was so poorly written that when I began its rewrite (having somewhat matured) I was appalled at what I had made. That's why I deleted it. I was just so embarrassed. And this time, I knew I could do so much better.

But, while the writing had indeed improved, the story did not. You see, while I was a Naruto fan, I wasn't so much of one that I knew the nations, the different kage, and had only a rough estimation of just who the Akatsuki were. I thought that would give me freedom to do as I pleased. And that would be true, if I was writing my own work. But, I was working with a world that had already been established. I was under the illusion that I had most of the deck, when in reality, I didn't have a single face card to my name.

Then came in the problems of trying to combine CoD and Naruto worlds. I tried getting around it by saying that Naruto took place far, far into the future and the world we know had long since faded to the sands of time. This had opened up a lot of questions that I didn't even realize, such as: How did mankind obtain the use of chakra? Why is the prison still around when nothing else from that time is? If the prison had been used as a forced labor camp to mine the minerals from within, how is there anything left? And that was just the beginning.

Ultimately, I had set myself up to fail from the get go by not properly researching what I was working on. Something I have seen with later works, although I have done better to get a grasp on those. My drive for this story is gone. The spark, long since dead. I do apologize to those who wanted it to continue, but I can't. If I want to make a career as an author, I need to acknowledge my mistakes, and to me this was nothing more than a mistake.

Still, quite a few of you liked it. Or at least what I trying to do with it. So, if you wish to take a crack at it, try your own version of this particular tale, then I hereby give you my permission to do with it as you please.

Farewell, The Lone Swordswolf