Hey guys, thesaiyanjedi here, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to offer up one final little addendum to Shinachiku's First Adventure."

I wanted to reiterate how much of a pleasure it was to write this story for all of you, my fellow members of the NaruSaku fan community. Since I started, two years have passed since the manga came to an end and now the anime has pretty much caught up with the manga. The only chapter they have left to directly adapt is Chapter 700, even though they did translate the very last page.

Incidentally, the anime's adaptation of Chapter 699 did give me some inspiration to go back in and tweek a couple of very minor details, specifically that Sasuke was locked in a prison cell with seals over his eyes, that Shikamaru was made one of Kakashi's advisers during his time as Hokage, and that Naruto would have to go through some comically excessive study time to make Jōnin. These were things that, retroactively, made sense to me that I felt I could squeeze in without anyone noticing and would not change a thing. But I digress...

The main thing I wanted to talk about was what writing this story did for me, personally, as a NaruSaku fan. While writing this story was very much an exercise in creative expression and getting an idea out there for a story, I also found writing this to become...'therapeutic' I suppose is the word. What I mean by that is that as the story got bigger and bigger and took longer and longer for me to write, and as my real life went through a number of changes along the way, big and small, I found myself slowly but surely transcending through the five stages of grief that NaruSaku did not happen until now I feel like I've reached the point that, I think, a lot of us NaruSaku fans have reached by this point...acceptance.

Now, when I say that, I do NOT mean accepting that NaruHina and SasuSaku happened and forcing ourselves to like it. No, I merely mean accepting the reality that this is how the story ended in the real world (i.e. canon), but we personally would have preferred something different and, in our opinion, better. And to be completely fair, there have been other franchises where popular pairings did not come to pass that were much more appalling than this. I still remember back when I was in middle school and Digimon Adventure 02 ended with Sora dating and later marrying Matt instead of Tai (or Taichi and Yamato if you prefer the Japanese naming)...All these years later and I still feel that was a bizarre choice, but that's just me. I also thought it was really obvious that Ash and Misty from Pokémon were being set up as a couple, until Misty stopped being a main character and we got into a pattern of Ash getting a new female traveling companion every season, none of which he ever thinks to ask out on a date...And yes, I know about what is apparently going on between him and Serena, but I haven't seen very much of that season and, I'm sorry, but Misty was the Pokémon girl of my generation anyway...Where was I going with this? Oh yeah!

My point in all of this is that I feel like writing "Shinachiku's First Adventure" has done a lot for me as a NaruSaku fan. It has allowed me to create my own alternative ending to a series I enjoyed but was let down by the creator's decisions to end his series. And I understand, Naruto is Masashi Kishimoto's creation and he does have the right to end his story any way he chooses, whatever the motivations for it may have been. But I saw the series going in the different direction than the creator was and I reflect that in my writing.

Do I still love NaruSaku? YES! Yes I do, and those who disagree with me are entitled to their opinion, so long as I am allowed to have mine. The way I'm coming to think of it, the canon ending is sort of like one reality where certain decisions were made by these characters and certain events happened, while my own SFA continuity is an alternate reality where it went a different, but I feel equally plausible way. Naruto has already explored this concept in the film Road to Ninja, where Naruto and Sakura are transported into a genjutsu world where everyone they know exists as their opposite. Some of you might argue that that world wasn't real, merely a genjutsu, but I recall that Tenten somehow ended up in that same reality during the War arc and, amusingly, the Naruto of that universe (Menma) was stuck is a Sasuke-esc situation where Hinata and Sakura were both constantly fighting over him, while the Sakura of that world was not attracted to Sasuke at all because, with his clan still alive, he was allowed to grow up to be a womanizing playboy instead of an emo revenge seeker. If one reality exists where Sakura was attracted to Naruto, why can't there be another? Every choice we make creates a different reality, so the theory says, creating a seemingly infinite series of possible realities, some so similar to our own that we can spend a lifetime trying to track down even the slightest difference, while other realities seem so different from our own that they defy comprehension...

...Okay, assuming I haven't just put all of you to sleep with my exploration of the alternative reality theory, I will say that this is a way I am coming to look at my own continuity of Naruto stories. The canon ending is what it is, and this is my idea for an alternate path that I've come up with and wanted to share, simple as that. That's kind of what all fanfiction is really, a bunch of fans putting out their ideas for stories based on their favorite series and, maybe, steering it in direction they would prefer that series to go, regardless of whatever the "real" path of the story ends of being.

...

So, does any of this mean I am done writing for NaruSaku? ...Nope! I still have some ideas that I look forward to figuring out and, hopefully, sharing with all of you someday! But I am also interested in exploring other fandoms as well. Evangelion, Avatar, Dragon Ball, One Piece, Gravity Falls...who knows?! We'll just have to see what the future holds.

One thing I do feel certain about (at least at the time of this writing), is that I doubt I will be writing anything as lengthy as SFA anytime soon. This was my very first fanfic and it went for 51 chapters that took me two years to finish. That was a much bigger commitment than I originally planned on, so whatever comes in the future I expect will be a lot shorter in length...Then again, you never know.

I think that's all I have to say. Thank you all so, so much for sticking with me on this journey. This was a very personal project that I put literally every idea I had into and what you have read over the last two years was the result. As I said in the final chapter, I could not have asked for better fans!

And so, until next time, see ya!