Neon Shinobi: The Last Ghost

The city never slept. Beneath the neon haze and the endless hum of machinery, something was always moving, always watching.

Naruto knew this.

He could feel it—patterns in the data streams, shifts in the surveillance grid, the way even the wind seemed to carry whispers of something unseen. He wasn't just being hunted. He was being studied.

The Ghost Division.

A name that carried weight in the underbelly of this world. They weren't just enforcers or mercenaries. They were something else. Something built to erase anything that didn't belong.

And right now, that meant him.

He sat in the shadows of an abandoned maintenance tunnel, letting his systems recalibrate. His body hummed with residual energy from the last fight. The fusion of chakra and technology inside him was still stabilizing, still evolving. His Plasma Rasengan was more powerful than he expected, but it wasn't perfect yet. There were still moments—fractions of a second—where his body lagged, where he could feel the strain of something pushing against the limits of what he had become.

He needed to get stronger.

A faint ping in his neural interface. A nearby system had been breached.

He didn't move, only listened.

Someone was accessing the old city archives. Not through normal channels. This was a direct intrusion, bypassing firewalls, moving through the forgotten depths of the grid.

Naruto tapped into the stream, tracing the signal. Whoever it was, they were good—fast, efficient. But not perfect.

He followed them.

Data unraveled before him, lines of code turning into fragmented images. Blueprints of old war machines. Reports on failed cybernetic experiments. Classified files stamped with the insignia of a defunct corporation: TENZAI INDUSTRIES.

His breath stilled.

He knew that name.

It was the same corporation that had built the first generation of cybernetic enforcers. The same company that had mysteriously collapsed decades ago, leaving behind nothing but whispers.

The pieces were starting to fit together.

Before he could go deeper, the system shut down abruptly.

Whoever had been inside the archives was gone. But they had left something behind.

A message, buried within the last fragment of code:

"If you want the truth, meet me at Gridpoint Zero. Midnight."

Naruto's eyes narrowed.

A trap? Maybe.

But he was done running.

The hunt was over.

Now, it was his turn.