Announcement and Explanation!

I was recently asked by a reader when I was ever going to update Overlay. Since I'd put the fic on a permanent hiatus, I was quite perplexed until I actually went and glanced at Overlay. To my shock, I'd actually left that bit promising a complete rewrite up! Apologies for that, comrades.

I really did try to write an outline out. The problem was, the more I wrote out, the stupider it sounded. So here's how things would have gone in a brief summary:

-Deimos would have woken up in a temple of Inari, argued with the god, and gone out blaming Inari. Eventually though, he would recover from the death of Kasshoku. He'd have actually met and fallen for another kitsune over the course of the next two or three chapters.

-During those two or three chapters, a black kitsune would be introduced. Deimos wouldn't like him, they'd come to within an inch of fighting, and would go their separate ways because they would probably kill each other if they fought. (And the gods frown on direct combat between beings of their strength - Deimos kind of turned a fifth of the continent to desert when he killed the Gobi. Woops.) Never bothered to think of a name for the black kitsune.

-Deimos decides to settle down at a small human town. He can screw around with humans and doesn't have to work very hard to get food. In the natural course of things, he becomes viewed as a sort of guardian spirit/leader figure. His main assistant is a man with blond hair, blue eyes, and is named Namikaze Arashi. (Arashi was the fanon name for the Yondaime before it was revealed. There's no other real reason.) For pure amusement, Deimos teaches the humans some of the basics of chakra. Arashi applies it to seals, and Deimos is vaguely interested with the possibilities, but not overly so. The man is smart, but still only human.

-Eventually, Inari would summon all the kitsune together for a meeting. This is rather unheard of, Deimos is confused but goes along with it anyway. He's had little contact with the god since Kasshoku's death. He's kind of forgiven the god over the intervening years, or at least doesn't actively hate him any more. But when Inari's spirit form appears...it's a ten tailed black kitsune. The same one that Deimos nearly fought with. The fox announces that he's killed Inari and his taking his name and position. The spirit form disappears. All kitsune now owe him their allegiance. Very few are happy about this.

-Two kitsune are assigned to "inspect" Deimos' town and report back to Inari. They arrive when Deimos is out, probably talking to other foxes about what they're going to do about the new management. He heads home, resigned to at least nominally submitting to the god's will. Problem is, when he gets home, the kitsune he fell in love with and the two kits they'd had are dead. When he approaches the bodies, a trap is activated. A black "tail" of chakra overwhelms him, and starts to take over his mind. Deimos reverts to human form, trying to slow down the progress of the tail by making its physical form disappear. It works, to a limited extent, and he shows up at Arashi's door sweating uncontrollably, fighting the foreign urge to burn the whole town to the ground. Arashi manages to seal the tail at the cost of his own life. Deimos passes out.

-Deimos goes back to ruling over the town. Inari isn't much more of a problem, besides giving him the occasional insane urge from the sealed tail. Still, Deimos wants vengeance. He takes a member of the Hyuuga clan, who have the ability to create undetectable "portals" anywhere within a mile to see through, and warps him into an Uchiha using the power of the dark tail. The Uchiha were specifically designed to be able to rip holes in the dimensional walls. Their other abilities were side effects. Deimos creates more, and all are pleased with the transformation, considering that they _had_ been Branch House and are now Main House of a new family. Deimos lets them establish themselves in the village for a few years, get families, etc. Then Deimos takes the Uchiha to the symbolic mirror at Inari's temple, and they manage to rip open a portal to the divine plane where Inari lives, intent on killing the bastard. Deimos, before entering, swears that he will not leave without killing Inari. The original Uchiha, Madara, immediately betrays Deimos and portals him out of the room. Kitsune are creatures impossibly bound to their oaths, and Deimos just broke his. The stress of the broken oath snaps Deimos' soul in half. One half of the soul becomes the Kyuubi, and goes on a rampage right where he appears - Konoha, which, long ago, was the village Deimos ruled over. (Time flows at a much slower rate in the divine plane than on the mortal one.) Naruto is born dead, and the Yondaime uses he corpse as the container for the Kyuubi. The Kyuubi's soul is followed by the other half of Deimos - which infuses the area of Naruto's body around the seal, and becomes "Naruto."

-Naruto wakes up from the flashbacks. Using his newfound knowledge, he shatters the seal and forces the Kyuubi to reunite with him. Deimos is reborn.

-Deimos makes a deal with the Shinigami. "It is the tradition that when one kitsune kills Inari, they become Inari. They become divine. Help me kill Inari, and I become a god. I will give you my 'divine' soul and his. Two gods for the price of one." The Shinigami agrees, they easily defeat Inari, and Deimos pulls a bait-and-switch at the last minute by forfeiting his divinity. Can't very well give up his divine soul if it isn't divine. The Shinigami departs with Inari's soul, mildly amused at Deimos' boldness.

And here we have problems. Where to go from there? Nowhere, really, and it's a horrible place to end because it raises far more questions than it answers. What does Deimos do now? He's completely incapable of having a Naruto-esque relationship with the people of Konoha; he's far more than Naruto now. Similarly, Konoha would have difficulty accepting him as something OTHER than Naruto or the Kyuubi. There was also going to be stuff about Tsukiyomi being the way gods wage war - create an alternate dimension where you're both omnipotent. Winner is the one who kills the others mental representation, thus destroying their mind. Had no idea what I was gonna do with Sasuke and Sakura. Or Bull.

Well, it's late, but it's done. Your outline. Overlay is now over. Questions, comments and reviews are welcome.