A/N: Ah yes, the first chapter of the newly revised Memoirs. Only it's not the memoirs of an N7 anymore is it?

Most of you are probably wondering why I decided to rewrite and I think most of the answer lies in the Prologue. Oddly enough, I believed I had to dumb it down and when I tried, I really tried to smooth it out...but it didn't work.

A lot of people didn't get the vignette-style and became lost. I myself thought it clear-cut for the most part-but I will admit some parts perhaps didn't come off the way I intended. In the end, it ultimately didn't matter.

I wasn't telling the story I had set out to tell in the first place.

My Naruto has a divergent background, is very AU, and resembles Menma, Lelouch, or Jorg Ancrath more than anyone else. I believe, however, that canon Naruto, if pushed to the breaking point harder during his upbringing and molded by his brilliant father and mother (and various other...influences), would bring about a more exaggerated, charismatic, and overall darker personality than in canon. The original story I wrote did not do an adequate job of portraying the origins of the Naruto I wanted-thus the future chapters would not have worked out.

Hopefully, this story will.

Side-note: this chapter is a teaser, an en medias res.

The next chapter will not be out till I'm fully done plotting the story, so I ask you to speculate freely. There are a lot of hints hidden away in this first chapter. Chronologically-speaking though, THIS CHAPTER IS OUT OF CONTEXT. The next chapter is the BEGINNING of the first arc of the story. This falls somewhere in-between the first arc and the second arc of the story. BE WARNED. I don't know how much more I can emphasize that there is a LOT of back-story behind this beginning chapter. I will be forced to label you an idiot if you complain about this chapter being confusing.

If you do not heed these words, you are a fucking idiot and there is no hope for you. Please move on at that point because I'm catering to a more intelligent audience. May God (or whoever you believe in) have mercy on your soul.

PM if you want. Flames will be accepted and used to light the fires in my soul.

Cheers,

Arte of Warfare

P.S. I don't own the Mass Effect series or Naruto.

Chapter 1: The King's Fall

"I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire."
― William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

CE 2175, Cronos Station, Horsehead Nebula, Anadius; Unidentified CSV

Namikaze Naruto

Naruto's destination loomed large in the viewscreen of his ship.

The previous owner of the frigate wouldn't be needing it after they accomplished their mission here. His face had a permanent smile on it as he continued looking out at the monolithic structure ahead of them. In space, the orbital facility hung like a colossal dagger; a dagger held in fixed orbit around the cold, dying star Anadius.

Around him in the conference room and connected crew lounge, his compatriots—most of them not even old enough to need a serious shave yet—sat every which way on any available surface, cleaning and priming guns, wiping blades, or tinkering with biotic amplifiers with a calm that called to mind soldiers on a mission of routine importance.

That impression would be the farthest thing from the truth.

Naruto could feel the stillness had a manic edge to it. This was no routine mission and still waters ran deep in his team. Naruto knew that better than anyone. They were his, heart and soul, after all. He'd earned their undying loyalty the hard way—not that he thought he deserved it. But it was useful—so he made sure to use them and made a point later to say a quiet word to each one.

He shifted in his command seat, wrapping his voluminous cloak about him for comfort against the chill of the metal compartment. Naruto preferred it icy and more akin to a meat locker than a custom-built ship designed for crew comforts—something the last owners of the ship were known for. The icy atmosphere kept him on his toes, something he'd learned from his Russian lieutenant, Angel, who frequently took swims in the icy waters of their home-base on the planet Despoina.

The commander of the ship buried his nose in the fabric and was forced to inhale the strong odors he simply couldn't get out; the metallic scent of blood and the pungent aroma of burnt metal and smoke deeply embedded in the now-scarlet piece of fabric. There was a history behind the clothing item and although he called it a cloak, it really was a long, tattered and raggedy banner that was once a solid yellow and gunmetal, with a large black symbol stitched in the center of the white facade.

It wasn't white anymore; the lifeblood of both foes and comrades made sure of that.

The piece was very much out of place, a slash of deep crimson color in an otherwise gray and lifeless ship and crew colored mostly in black and silver. His band, their flickering gazes resting occasionally on his cloak, was a constant reminder to him of the promises he'd made, of the grand purpose that had come out of the hell they'd left behind, and the person he'd been before he led them out. For Naruto, it was a painful reminder of the pact he'd made with himself; of the sacrifices he was willing to make and of the lengths he was willing to go to fulfill the promise he'd made to himself and to those in his band.

The fading emblem was almost unidentifiable by the sheer amount of blood stained deep in the fabric as it hadn't been a flag for years now. Frayed edges and long, jagged rips gave it a shroud-like quality as it settled around his dented and mismatched, but well-cared for armor. He'd spray-painted his armor a while ago, after they'd left their makeshift headquarters on Despoina, and the result was a bone-white and black, skeletal-looking ensemble.

He looked like a corpse trailing blood.

Combined with his armor, the whole ensemble made him a Frankenstein monster of different era's and genres; greaves and vambraces of a dead N7 they'd found in an abandoned colony, a breastplate of a Cerberus sharpshooter who thought he'd had the drop on him, and as for the helmet—well, the long, curving horns of bone that jutted up from his head, white-grey and still growing around his long, shaggy outgrowth of bright gold hair like a lion's mane, well, it made it somewhat hard to put on a full mask. He'd been told the brightly-colored cyclopean mask he'd chosen made him look like the Devil himself.

Had the devil known what he would become when he made his stand against God? Did that make him brave? Did that make him a hero—or a villain?

Regardless, Naruto was content.

Besides, his inner circle thought him some kind of fallen angel come to baptize the world in blood and fire and remake it according to his vision and they weren't far wrong, but they weren't totally right either. Naruto didn't bother to correct them as it was a delicate balance of fear and respect with most of the Band, with the possible exception of his innermost confidants; the people who knew the real plan—the real scope of Naruto's ambitions.

But fear proved useful sometimes.

In fact, as it was, nobody wanted to meet Naruto's gaze—and he couldn't blame them—though whether it was out of deference or fear he couldn't tell. The last time he'd checked in a mirror and evaluated the changes he'd undergone as a result of his decision—good or bad yet he couldn't decide—the purple ripple-pattern of his right eye, and the solid-white of his left, cowed even the most hardened criminal element in their band of freaks, outcasts, and tortured victims. If you added in his youthful features, the delicate fair-skin and long golden-blonde hair, they only contributed an element of innocence lost to his horned, demonic appearance. That wasn't counting the vibrant blood-red mask complete with a single, clear optic sensor that made him seem even less human.

He'd stolen the idea from his dearest uncle…may he rest in hell.

He found he couldn't care less—though that was true about a lot of things these days. Angel and Zero tried their best to snap him out of his black moods whenever they happened, but it was a futile effort most times. Anger kept him focused like a laser on his goals. The feeling was useful, especially when working his techniques.

Silent, cold evenings with only his memories for company were hard though.

He appreciated the thought nonetheless—not that he'd ever tell them that. The devilish commander dropped his gaze back to the mirror-bright blade that he was oiling in his lap. Naruto's hands moved automatically as he swiped the oiled rag back and forth along the five and a half foot long black saber. The thing was a hunk of metal; of repurposed ablative armor from a ship whose broken-off armor he'd happened to use as a makeshift weapon. After the fight, he'd been almost comatose and so out of it. He'd dragged the long awkward thing back to the ship with him. There, he'd taken it, honed both sides to an atom-thick edge, made it collapsible, and paired it with a jury-rigged non-slip grip. It paid to be safe after all. From then on, the massive foot-and-a-half-thick weapon was something he'd carried strapped to the small of his back ever since.

He'd cobbled most of their band's weapons, armor, and equipment from the battlefields they'd fought on—every one related to Cerberus in some way. He was like a fat parasite growing stronger by the hour as his enemy grew weaker, sucking the vitality out of them and subsuming his victim into himself.

They were vampires and devils taking the souls of their various conquests; a snake, swallowing their prey whole. Naruto shifted uncomfortably, conscious of the rippling sleeve of black lines on his upper-arm, a remnant of his sensei...someone he'd never thought he'd ever have much in common with. It was an uncomfortable thought, but he dismissed it in favor of the much more light-hearted thought that the man was dead. It meant the man never obtained the dream he sought with such fervor...ironically, Naruto had achieved it first-and in a way that his sensei had dismissed as a fairytale.

Naruto smirked with black humor. Zero, sitting on his left, all elaborately tattooed up , eyed his expression with one skeptical eyebrow. Naruto merely gave her a blank look and she shrugged, turning back to her ridiculously over-sized monstrosity of a shotgun. He was pretty sure that krogan-model she was handling like it weighed nothing was banned in a bunch of places. An automated voice blazing over the loudspeaker cut through the eerie stillness and snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Commander, your presence is requested on the bridge."

Naruto nodded to his inner circle seated around him at the conference table; his second-in-command of operations Angel, their heavy-hitter Beast, his electronic wizard Rat, and his walking-calamity Zero. They all watched him stand up, the cloak fluttering down to his feet. Silence.

Their commander pulled his mask up to his face from his belt where it dangled and spoke briefly into his comms, "I'll be right there."

Nobody spoke and he could feel the tension as he reattached his mask to his belt; they'd been working up to this point—this place—for almost three years. Hell, Naruto was almost an adult now. It was a strange thought—maybe he was getting old. It felt important—momentous.

At this stage, they could all but taste their first true victory.

Naruto ratcheted the blade horizontally against his lower spine and it collapsed into a manageable size. The horned blonde turned to leave, but paused. His subordinates had stood as one and kept their arms at their sides. Naruto considered them, looking at each one in turn; Beast, with his freakishly massive armored presence and comforting solidness; Rat with his twitchy, plucky countenance; Zero, his tattooed, tomboyish one-woman wrecking ball; and Angel, his right-hand woman and a stone-cold angel-faced assassin, one you never even saw coming. They were his new family.

Naruto continued walking after a beat, smiling at them. He left the conference room in silence and passed blood stains on the gangplank up to the elevator that connected the rooms to the bridge. He made a mental note to have someone clean all the filth up from their hostile takeover when they finished with this mission.

Silence stretched as the elevator ascended, passing three floors. A pleasant chime dinged out on his final destination; the Command Information Center. The blonde stepped out and passed through the next doorway, nodding to a few of his subordinates along the way who passed by him in the hall on various errands, and entered into the cramped bridge of the Cerberus vessel where their pilot skillfully maneuvered towards the eight-mile long exposed docking port jutting out from the towering orbital station.

The pilot—simply called Mute by most—was a scarred, mutilated girl of seventeen, dressed in her typical strange garb—something related to backwoods shamanism he'd heard. Fur from strange animals, prayer beads of every shape, size, and color hung off her lean, leather-clad frame. She had a mace with a big jewel on it propped up against a wall within arm's reach. Naruto didn't know what any of it meant—and he was as close to country bumpkin you could get. But it just so happened that he didn't care all that much about her past, only that he or she was (in an ironic twist) an ace with any ship they came across.

He cared about function only. In return for piloting their ships, they let her sacrifice a few prisoners. She seemed content.

Over time, the Band picked up a bit of the sign language she'd created for herself since Cerberus cut out her tongue (for some minor misdemeanor) in the hell they'd all escaped from together. The band let return the favor to those Cerb soldiers unlucky enough to be taken prisoner. She danced and chanted and sprinkled her herbs and incense while they begged for death under her tender care. Naruto had to admit she was an artist with a knife. The screams echoed a long way in an empty ship like theirs. He never knew how useful it was to have a pilot who doubled as a professional torturer.

Function, like he said.

Mute carefully got his attention by waving and grinning like the village idiot (in some ways she was). He got the message.

All-clear. Signals launched. Still undetected. Green to go.

She scrambled their codes and enabled the protocols Rat, their resident cyber-genius, cooked up for them to bypass the numerous and extensive cyberwarfare defenses Cronos Station had in place to prevent exactly what they were trying to accomplish. Rat had assured them that his routines and protocols would allow them to enter like ghosts in the system.

Naruto had no trouble believing him.

The last Namikaze didn't really know anything about computers—other than what he'd picked up from watching Rat and the others—but he did know enough to realize Rat wasn't entirely…human…in the way that he interacted with electronic systems. There was something almost artificial about him. Naruto didn't think too hard about it, but he had to admit it was eerie and somewhat off-putting the way he simply went vacant and his eyes flashed with an electric glow as he manipulated things beyond what they could see. Whatever he could do—and whatever he was—Naruto was grateful. This upcoming operation would be impossible without the best of the best. And that was Rat.

Besides, Naruto could hardly speak about off-putting inhuman powers as he'd been told the tricks he used were downright terrifying. Teleportation, he'd been told, wasn't natural—nor was summoning lightning storms or swimming for hours underwater, or lightings things on fire with a snap of his fingers. It was minor shit to him—minus the teleportation bit—but he couldn't argue with the freaky-factor.

Frankly, with regards to his powers, he was only an infant still trying to learn to walk.

Scratch that, it was more like he had his spine broken, or had his brain bashed in and he had to relearn to write, to read, to do all the basic things he'd taken for granted. The best way to put it was…he was an ocean of power with a tiny spigot; the spigot was his ability to shape it. The spigot he'd used for his tiny powers before was now entirely different and you had to grip it just a certain way in order to turn it on. It took time to tap into what he had, but for now at least, he had a few parlor tricks and a few true magicks to fall back on; chakra techniques he'd reworked from his old life. Naruto had been taught by the best of the monsters in his old world and that tutelage would show, in time.

Who was he to judge then, what was inhuman? Given what he was planning to do to everyone?

The blonde snapped out of his thoughts as he readied the orders he wanted to give. The ship jolted before he could finish planning, signaling the beginning of a docking procedure. Time was of the essence then. He pressed the button on the orange, translucent command center in front of him and started barking orders to his ghosts and vampires and demons waiting below to wreak unholy vengeance on those who'd tortured them, abused them, spat on them, and crippled them all—tore them away from their families, their friends; the love they should have had—all in the name of science and evolution.

They'd put an end to it all, here and now. But it was a beginning too; the smiles pasted on all the young faces spoke volumes. This was only the beginning for them.

Naruto smiled, a demonic parody of true happiness; a bloodthirsty rictus. Those around him looked pleased to see it. Like sun coming out from behind the clouds.

All across the ship, young armored figures slapped thermal clips into assault rifles and shotguns, biotic amplifiers suddenly hummed and surged with electricity, and melee weapons were hefted.

Their ship, a ghost ship, was about to make its final stop.

Forever.

Cerberus, they'd painstakingly found out through a hundred different engagements, relied extensively on their mechanical soldiers for more than just fighting. There was some simple reasons for this over-reliance; humanity itself relied on fire support, flexibility, and speed against alien aggressors. They simply did not have the numbers of troops to engage in slug-matches with alien foes like the Krogan or the Turians—Earth's forces were all volunteer…and so were Cerberus'.

To make up for this drawback, humans—and by extension Cerberus—used sophisticated technological support in the form of VI's, drones, powerful artillery, advanced biotics, electronic warfare, and an emphasis on mobility, individual initiative, and legions upon legions of mechanized infantry to level the playing field.

Humanity was a sleeping giant as only three percent of its total population was part of the military. Cerberus had only a further fraction of that number to draw on. As it turns out, this lack of real manpower made Cronos station vulnerable to Rat's unique powers as the station was filled to the brim with thousands of human-sized LOKI mechs and behemoth YMIR mechs.

Naughty, naughty. Had they not learned anything?

Shortly, they would all be under Rat's direct control.

Rat made Naruto's job very, very easy.

The horned blonde teen's body rippled like a pond disturbed by a stone and continued strolling through the dark-lit station, suddenly wearing the face of dearly-departed Cerberus agent Miranda Lawson. Even from beyond the grave she was assisting him on his journey. She'd 'offered' him the location herself, right from her bloody lips—though, to be fair, it had been hard to resist when his arm was stuck through her chest. She'd given him the truth he sought in the end, even though he had had to drag it from her very soul. His right eye gleamed purple in remembrance. He savored every second of that bitch's screams. Naruto had to drag himself out of his pleasant thoughts as Naruto's crew had let him off at Docking Bay 17, a long, long way from his ultimate destination at the top of the station.

In order to get the exact coordinates of the station, they'd had to savage their way through multiple firebases, outposts, and listening stations in order to gain the clearest picture anyone in the entire universe had of the main base of Cerberus—and the spider lying in wait at the center of the web.

The Illusive Man was truly an elusive foe.

Miranda had given him a face, some coordinates, generic habits (smoked like a chimney, had sex with paid supermodels regularly, and had absurdly over-priced suits), and a general overview of his likely moves, but not much else. His real name, for instance, was something they still didn't know—and likely never would. But Naruto could live with that as he knew that his foe had no idea what was coming for him, the real reason they were knocking on his castle.

How could he?

Naruto and his crew were no-names, ghosts, only a nuisance to Cerberus. Their hit-and-run tactics hadn't been a true threat. On top of that, they were most certainly not targeting anything Alliance-related, nor had they ever harmed a hair on the head of any of the Council's precious soldiers.

No, he and his Band of Merry Assholes stuck to gutting other pirates in the lawless Terminus system and defended the area around Despoina, occasionally harrying Cerberus wherever and whenever they could.

It made them something of experts on these kinds of tactical insertions.

Naruto made himself pay attention to his route. His booted footsteps were silent in the deserted, maze-like corridors of the base. He frequently consulted the stolen and much-battered omni-tool on his left arm for directions at every intersection, seeking to ascend further into the unfinished station. From the intelligence they'd gathered, this base was one that was only half-completed—a work-in-progress. Cronos station was working on only a skeleton crew at the moment due to the sensitive nature of the facility—and automated nature of most of the labor.

Paranoid bastard.

But really, he couldn't complain because about the Illusive Man's paranoid behavior; this plan would not have been possible if this station had been filled to capacity with actual, live soldiers. Naruto stopped dead as he came to a service elevator highlighted and marked on his three-dimensional orange diagram. This was it. He took off his mask to better navigate without distractions, hooking it to his belt. Putting a hand on either edge of the door, he pried them apart with main strength, lean muscles flexing and body glowing slightly as potent golden chakra rushed through the tenketsu on his hands and wrists, empowering him with the strength of an Atlas.

With careful control, he only left slight furrowed dents in the metal as he pried open the shaft without too much noise. Honestly, it wasn't like anybody would really hear him—though it paid to be cautious nonetheless as silence was a ninja's best friend.

Naruto stuck his head out and looked up and down the shaft. Elevator technology had apparently come far since he'd been a kid. The mass effect technology that was at the heart of everything in this world he'd been thrust into affected everything from weapons, to food processing, to the elevators. As such, the shaft he'd stuck his head into was streamlined and relatively empty of anything with which to grab—all the better to help shoot an elevator covered in a bounded field straight up at high speeds and no ill effects.

So with one foot placed one after the other, he slowly fed chakra to the tenketsu on the bottom of his feet—which was a little more difficult through his boots than through sandals. The whole process was definitely painstaking. But, as a medic, good control was paramount, but trying to control the raging torrents of intoxicating power dammed up behind his inner gates was like trying to surf an Asari dreadnaught through a mass relay while stuck on the outside.

Fucking nuts.

So he stuck to the small stuff. Eighteen stories were bypassed with these small, agonizing steps.

As Naruto passed each level, he heard gunfire and shouts through the doors. At one point, a round penetrated the door and almost took his ear off. It left a sizzling hole in the metal next to him. The adrenaline running through his veins was comforting after that. He redoubled his efforts and strode vertically up another twenty-five floors worth in half the time. His omni-tool beeped at every flight. A red-light lit up in the darkness and he looked down at his computer; the beep confirmed it—he reached his destination.

The only sound on this floor was his slow, deep breathing echoing around him in the darkness. Naruto felt restless energy coursing through his veins speed up in response to his excitement and eddies of power threatened to knock out his control over his foots bond to the wall. He forcibly calmed himself and restrained a grim smile from breaking out across his face.

So far, so good.

Naruto slowly pulled his body into an L-shape, grabbed the lip of the elevator entrance, and smoothly stood upright into a darkened lobby from the miles of shaft behind him. The room he had entered was clearly expensive and tasteful; he knew that because there was dark, rich-looking wood adorning every wall. He hadn't seen wood paneling yet on the couple of space-stations he'd been on, so Naruto assumed that meant the wood was hard to get, though he couldn't fathom why—every planet he'd been on had lush forests. Pragia, for instance, had a wrathful, almost sentient forestry that would've made the Mokuton-wielding First Hokage shit a brick.

He snorted at the mental image.

It was clear his team had hit the control center like they'd planned and the lights were either a deep, sinister red or out completely. His gaze roved about the eerie, dark room. It would've been hard for anyone else to see clearly in the dim-lighting, but his eyes were more than up for the challenge. Scanning the room, he noticed the odd mix of furniture and objects; most of which was either covered in plastic tarps—with scaffolding around some of it—or historical in nature

Large murals of battles, in what he assumed was Earth's past, graced the walls. Naruto bent to examine the subtitles; heroes like Achilles and Hector battled in the fields of a place called Troy. The Betrayal of Paris and the Ego of Agamemnon bracketed the battling titans. Naruto had no idea strong warriors like these had existed—Greece sounded like an amazing place.

Against his will, he stopped to admire the artwork.

Heroes all; though some were more obvious than others. Odysseus the clever, Hercules the strong, Prometheus the giving; some punished for what others would see as acts of great bravery. Naruto felt an odd kinship with some of these misunderstood heroes of yore. After a thousand years, who would be there to tell the real story about why you did what you did? People were free to point fingers and call you evil and what you did abominable; but perhaps someone like Prometheus was the reason humanity had been able to elevate themselves out of the muck and sludge?

You can't create weapons without fire…

Naruto knew the victors wrote the storybooks and he vowed that he'd be the one writing when this was all said and done. With that vow in mind, the cloaked assassin kept moving forward, striding in the only direction he could go; forward, down another long hallway filled with works of art depicting what he assumed were military greats.

His destiny was ahead through the door he was approaching. Dim red lights flickered and cast his face in scarlet relief. His left eye flashed solid red while the purple circles in his right faded into a deeper color, circling and twisting. The long, flowing banner-cloak hung still against his back in the non-existent air. It all smelled stale and faintly of fresh paint.

Naruto's sensitive nose twitched.

Naruto slipped his mask on, letting the contoured and armored transpari-steel façade mold itself to his face, filtering out the smell. The VI system booted up as it synced with his armor and omni-tools. Blue flickering screens spread up and out across his vision as his VI overlaid information on to the reality around him and went transparent. Numbers danced across his vision as a communications link solidified, finally, with the rest of his crew. Static crackled in his ear as Angela's voice came through quietly in the earpieces. He could hear fading gunfire in the background. His armored hand gently tapped against his comms button.

"All-clear boss; the main control center is ours. Live reinforcements are rallying though, just like you said they would. Second phase of the plan commences in about two minutes and they are walking right into it, again, just like you said."

His smirk was concealed by his mask.

"Deploy the decoys. After that, I won't need more than five minutes. I'll let you know when it's done—I'll make the station-wide announcement then."

"Understood sir. Angel out."

Click. Radio silence.

Naruto pulled his hand down from his ear piece and reactivated his omni-tool on his left arm, hitting a glowing, haptic button. A square shield of translucent orange sprang up, covering his left arm in a three-foot shield of transparent kinetic protection. He came to a stop at the massive ornate door about twelve feet across and twenty feet tall.

Imposing was the first word that came to mind.

He knew immediately that it was far more reinforced than it looked. Cleverly-disguised, the door had wooden-looking blocks in six sections along the edges of the door panel. They were heavy-bolt locking mechanisms for a portal as strong as a bank vault. Naruto placed one hand, fingers splayed out, against the deceptively-fragile looking door and breathed deep, reaching hard inside himself. Pathways opened and, if one was to have taken a look inside him at that moment, one would have seen shining, molten yellow chakra snaking outwards through his pathways. Bright gold chakra bubbled up around him and twisted around his arm, seeping out and spreading against the door. Wind picked up from the still room and he started shaping, channeling.

Naruto knew what he wanted the chakra to do; he'd learned that much from experimenting on their floating hideout on Despoina. Endless stretches of ocean were excellent as a punching bag. He'd found, while hunting through the depths with a rebreather, intent and science took him further than handseals with this kind of power, at least, that's how the guardians of the deep taught him.

Will.

Visualization.

Intent.

Naruto summoned it all; picturing the anger he felt as his body was flayed open on a Cerberus operating table. The hatred poisoning his veins as his sensei pried open his veins and taught him the meaning of pain. The laughter and love he felt when his mom tucked him and his little brother in at night, smoothing his hair back and placing a kiss on his sweaty forehead. Sweaty from training with his father, tired from expending so much energy trying to heal a bunch of fish from near death; these were the scenes he most associated with his family.

Love and hatred focused like a mass-accelerator cannon as he visualized the technique. Channeling the elemental force of wind, he took those emotions and funneled the spiritual energy into a vacuum-ejection point that exploded like a mini-nova against the door and sucked the entire doorframe up in a twister of energy and power and wind. The whole multi-ton door was ripped off its hinges and, with a flick of his hand and deep concentration, the vacuum-sphere instantly accelerated forward like a rushing train. Eight tons of nuclear-hardened steel flew like a shuriken, shattering multiple work stations, crushing a beautiful, fully-stocked bar, and finally embedding itself in the dura-steel walls of the Illusive Man's office. The noise of breaking glass, ripped and twisted steel, and a grinding swath of absolute destruction was deafening in the open room.

The man himself—unruffled—was standing, cigarette cocked in his mouth and not a hair out of place, completely unconcerned by the absolute devastation, hefted a heavy pistol and pointed the barrel straight at Naruto's face. And before the would-be assassin could register the threat, the man fired.

Once, twice; two shots rang out. Judging by the sound, two armor-piercing whip cracks.

The first bullet ruined his right knee in a spray of golden blood, the place where his armor was thinnest, dropping him to one knee. The second bullet ricocheted off the kinetic shield he crossed in front of himself lightning-quick. Naruto grimaced and forced a smile on his face.

"Expecting me were you?"

The man had the gall to smile.

Smile.

Dick.

"Something like that Naruto. You and I are a lot alike I think." Naruto snorted, straightening. "Did you honestly think, after the breakout at Asphodel, that I wouldn't realize you were behind the recent string of raids on my facilities?" Here, the blonde-haired assassin stayed silent, contemplative. "But I wonder…how did you get so much inside information? I run a very tight ship my boy."

The horned teen smiled at the man, "I ripped the information out of your dear Ms. Lawson. She was very willing…well, her corpse was at least—very chatty, probably because she had nothing left to lose, I suppose. Death does that to you."

Cigarette light flared as the man sucked in his nicotine, unconcerned about the events unfolding. He just looked thoughtful. "Her corpse you say? Fascinating. I told Miranda that you were a goldmine of untapped potential, I told her to be careful, I also distinctly recall telling heryou'd be trouble if we didn't handle you carefully…but what does she do? She tortures you and backs you into a corner." A puff on the cigarette. "Stupid cunt. I'm glad she's dead—you saved me the trouble. Too bad about her sister though."

Naruto simply raised an eyebrow. "Funny, I would have thought you'd be a tad peeved at me for offing her—no?"

A laugh interrupted him.

"Peeved? I wanted to flay you alive for daring to undermine my operation at Asphodel—until I found out what she did to you. She wanted results and chose the wrong way to go about getting what she wanted. It didn't help you almost choked her to death with your bare hands. When your…apotheosis came about it was a total surprise—very welcome in my eyes, but Miranda became frightened and she did not consult with me. So she overreacted. That is why I was angry with her. I was always about subtlety—never about unnecessary cruelty and overt gestures."

He didn't say he didn't condone it…just that he despised unnecessary things. Slippery bastard.

"Frankly, it doesn't matter—that isn't why I'm here." The man looked puzzled.

"Oh? Why not? I think it matters very much—and then why are you here? Naruto, you don't have to kill me to get what you want. Hell, I'll employ you. I can put matters behind me, you had a very good reason to want me killed. But I think you and I want the same thing, no? To drag our civilization forward and protect what's precious about humanity? Tell me I'm wrong."

Naruto was silent.

A minute passed before he spoke and when he did, he spoke slowly, picking up speed as he went.

"You and I want the same thing on the surface. That's true. But you are a coward who refuses to get his hands dirty. How can you justify the things you do when you aren't willing to do them yourself? How can you ask others around you to commit atrocities you aren't willing to carry out with your own hands? You are a spider, sitting in his web growing fat on the sins of others. You carry no torch forward and because of that, you cannot be the healer the universe needs. Cancers are spreading and pulling you out by the root is the first step to recovery." Here, he stepped forward and faced the Illusive Man, pointing a finger in judgment. "I, Naruto Namikaze, will perform the surgery with my own two hands. Not only because I dearly want to kill, but because I made a promise."

He stared at his opponent who simply watched him with a calculating gaze, so he continued.

"Believe it or not, I was the weakest person in my village once upon a time…the people I looked up to were titans of power, titans of strength. I could never measure up and I was expected to—but I was always four steps behind everyone else around me, including my enemies. Enemies that were lurking in the wings from day one. I never knew they were gunning for me until they cut everything I loved away from me. My brother, mother, and father…my uncle. My sensei. It didn't matter that I was smart and cunning. I simply wasn't powerful enough, fast enough, to stop all the bad things from happening."

"I have power now though. More than I can handle…and I've found that when you have power, you have a responsibility to those around you. To the world, to change it and leave it better than you found it. That, Mr. Illusive, is exactly what I plan to do."

Naruto's gaze became laser-focused on his foe. "And you are standing in the way of me remaking the world as I wish it to be!"

The man didn't have time to open his mouth.

Naruto gritted his teeth, ignored the gold ichor painting the ground along with his blown-out knee, and focused. Calculations flashed through his head as his right eye flared red, a ten daggered-wheel whirling, he peeled back the quantum layers of possibility and accelerated himself. His vision tunneled. Colors, images, and sounds blurred around him as he literally bored a hole through reality. He pulled himself through the intervening space between the leader of Cerberus and himself and, with a thunderous crack, slammed into the son of a bitch that was responsible for so much horror.

A flickering blue shield around the Illusive Man bled most of the energy of his hit off, but a crack of a breaking spine echoed through the room. Satisfaction rolled off the blonde in waves as his opponent was sent sprawling on the ground, broken.

Naruto attempted to straighten, but could only make it half-way up. His right arm reached under to the small of his back and detached the compressed black saber. With a flick of his wrist, five-and-a-half feet of steel hyper-extended. The behemoth weapon sure did get the job done—especially when he micro-fabricated a monomolecular edge for the massive foot and a half wide monstrosity.

He used it to keep himself upright as he limped over to the asshole bleeding from multiple wounds and a cut scalp and paralyzed with a broken back. The man's upper-body was slowly rolling around, suit all askew, in obvious and extreme pain from the concussive hit and subsequent broken bones. The fucker should never have been able to get the drop on him in the first place, but the plan called for it.

Naruto could admit to himself that he had gone in cocky though. He truly had wanted to speak to the man before doing the deed and baiting him with a disabling wound was the only way to get him to spill his secrets without killing him first. The Illusive Man had been right about one thing, they were very alike; and that was exactly why he planned it this way. Hubris was ever something he was wary of…most of the time.

It was mission accomplished; a suicide mission for anyone else but his team. They knew what they were getting into and its success had depended almost entirely on the element of surprise, intimate knowledge of their enemy—intelligence that no else had—and the sheer talent of their electronics-guru. Add in their sheer biotic might and you had the worst match-up for the Illusive Man possible.

That wouldn't happen again—hell, there wouldn't be a next time after this but as a general rule.

If he wanted to conquer, he couldn't do it from the grave.

Naruto limped over, using the thick blade as a crutch. He stooped down and picked up the man's still lit cigarette and took a knee next to the leader of Cerberus. The blonde pressed the lit cigarette into the man's neck and held it there. This man, the boogeyman that haunted many of his crew, screamed. He thrashed around and attempted to scoot away using one hand. The horned assassin flickered one armored fist out and punched him right in the face which snapped his neck and head back, slamming his head into the ground, dazing him. The man coughed and sputtered and lay still.

The blonde had enjoyed the screams while they lasted.

It was time to get down to business.

The soul was a tricky thing, as he'd found out with Miranda; the truth they spoke even more so. Naruto had found out almost accidently that you couldn't select the truth a soul spoke to you when you forcibly asked it to reveal its secrets. You rode it like a wave—a powerful, crashing wave that swept over you and showed you everything like you lived it…which you actually did in a way. It was oftentimes painful and more often enlightening—but it was mostly sad.

You know how the story ends after all.

The street went both ways, however, and Naruto was so looking forward to this one. Will. Intent. Visualization. The process was going faster each time he used his powers. Naruto's right eye flashed from the red dagger-wheel to the purple ripples slowly as he pictured his intent; a white room with black blocks that moved and rotated. Splatters of blood adorned pure white walls. A monolithic monochromatic throne sat on a raised dais in the center of the complex. A horned king with the kanji for Yama sat and glared out; a huge figure, white on black, all thorns and claws, all the while pronouncing eternal judgment. The images all flashed by in an instant as he snapped back to the man lying prone on the ground.

His arm and sword slowly became encased in a blinding white substance and Naruto stabbed downwards with his sword. Fabric, skin, muscle, bone, and viscera parted easily as the wide blade punctured his chest cavity and became anchored in the steel floor below him. Naruto smiled as the human responsible for uncountable amounts of suffering—and his own indirectly—spat up blood and tried to take a huge breath. But he didn't get to finish because a ghostly violet version of himself separated from his body and sat up, staring Naruto in the eye with a dead expression. The body below started seizing in spurts before it froze and his mouth opened and started screaming.

Hoarse, choked screams like a man being crucified echoed in the empty room.

The blonde assassin imagined that the man bleeding out on the ground was replaying Naruto's own life—and that he found himself unable to cope with the sheer horror of what had been inflicted on Naruto. That might not have been far off the mark as veins were popping in the man's eyes, filling the cornea with blood. More veins popped out in his neck and forehead while his lips started to turn blue. Gasps emerged more frequently.

The ghost started to speak over the man's cries in a monotone counterpoint. The spirit poured out secrets and truths and plots within plots. It poured out his life story—the how and why of Cerberus. The man had witnessed his own fair share of horrors, Naruto would give him that. He'd seen the overwhelming might arrayed against humanity on Shanxi, he'd seen the prothean relics, the terrors waiting in the deepest, darkest parts of space, and rightly concluded that humanity could not survive against the coming darkness. Humanity needed a sword and a shield against said darkness; someone willing to fight fire with fire, someone willing to do what was necessary to safeguard the most important part of life—to keep the Will of Fire burning as bright as the light of civilization.

But in the end, the man wasn't strong enough to be what the universe needed. The man was weak.

He worked from the shadows by pulling strings—you could never do what needed to be done that way, not by itself. No, to be a sword, you needed to engage. To fight and bleed, to kill and maim—upfront and personal and leading the charge. One needed to be a symbol and be more than just a person. The Illusive Man had gotten that much right—about the necessity of symbols—but what did he do with his symbolic might?

He squandered it, choked his adversaries through proxies, and grew fat in the center of his web, drunk on power that was not his own. He alienated those who most needed direction. Naruto had been as a man in a desert, looking for water, burnt by the sun and in desperate need. That water was power; and he had that in spades now.

And as he listened to the ghost of the man he'd killed and a man he was slowly growing to understand and admire for his conviction, if nothing else, Naruto understood something he hadn't before; that he needed to be more than he was now, he needed to insinuate himself into the heart of the conflict that was about to erupt, and lead from the front. The douchebag pouring his secrets out in front of him had the right idea about humanity's direction, but Naruto was going to take it one step further with the help of his crew…and now the full might of Cerberus. No, not Cerberus anymore and—well, the full might when they finished their hostile takeover.

A change in leadership was long overdue.

Naruto stood and his hands glowed golden-green as he repaired his ruined knee with his overpowered healing palm. Old habits die hard as his long-ingrained healer's reflexes took over, diagnosing and treating his own wounds. It wasn't bad thankfully. His shield deactivated and he compressed his saber back into a manageable size. An explosive sigh escaped him and Naruto let the bubbly golden chakra-sheath around him die.

One finger tapped the comms button on the side of his mask. "Angel, Zero; it's done. I'll make the announcement. You have taken care of every living person that can squeal on us?"

Joy bled through his subordinate's voice as she quickly passed the message on, he heard shouting and single gunshots ringing out, one by one. "Roger that sir, it is being taken care of as we speak. Hope the bastard squealed like a stuck pig, Sir."

"You know me; have I ever been accused of disappointing a lady?" He heard the silvery laugh loud and clear from the other end.

Naruto let off a quiet smile and cut communications, turning his mind to the bigger picture.

Any good doctor knew you needed to go to the root of a problem in order to cure it. As far as he could see, they had just performed a crucial first step; a complex surgery designed to tear out the cancer spreading across the body of humanity. Of course, a little healthy skin came with it…but that was to be expected. Cerberus, as it had been—a tumor that was dividing them all when they should be standing together—was no more, or close to it. Those divisions must be repaired at all costs. It was time to turn his attentions to the next stage, the main part of the plan.

The Systems Alliance was riddled with corrupt individuals vying for something other than the good of their people. He knew this because he now knew most of what the Illusive Man did. Simply put; the Alliance needed direction and he aimed to provide exactly that…but how to steer them in the direction he wanted?

It was a problem he'd already thought through and the answer was simple; they needed a symbol to unite them…and to lead. He didn't want to call it a hostile takeover, which was such a negative word, more…a gentle hand on the steering wheel.

How to get there though—? How could he become a symbol, a leader in the Alliance, like the plan required?

A face and a name swam to the forefront of his mind from his snippets of slowly-fading memories courtesy of Jack Harper; that of a beautiful, scarred red-head with a fierce sense of justice and an Alliance marine that was slated to become the first human Spectre in history.

Her face tugged at something inside him, something uncomfortable, and he ignored it as best he could.

Naruto Namikaze stood amongst the wreckage and smiled despite himself, this might be my ticket.

Anna Shepard.

The Illusive Man, born Jack Harper, died in agony in the very heart of his power on July 4th, in the year 2175 of the Common Era.

From that day forward, the world churned on and no one—not even the nigh-mythical Shadow Broker—knew the full truth. Cerberus ceased to exist and Phoenix took its place. Firebases Alpha through Zeta came under new management, Minuteman was repurposed, and orders were handed down swiftly through the normal stealthy channels—none knew that the ultimate figurehead, and the man behind the curtain, had been replaced. Sure, there were strange mutterings of a change in management, but the changes were good ones as far as the employees were concerned…almost nothing changed. Except one crucial thing; high-ranking officials typically visited with their Leader via hologram…and that's exactly what he did.

He'd had to execute a few who couldn't accept the reality; but funnily enough, when they first set eyes on him, most believed he was the antichrist of the old Christian religious texts. Naruto, after browsing much of Earth's history in his spare time, found it ironic that the zealous neo-Christian Xenophobes who infested the previous organization's ranks were the most willing to bow to the Devil when converted.

A fanged, curved smile appeared on his face whenever he thought of it.

In other areas he was getting up to speed with, Naruto had almost zero complaints—especially the more overt changes he was making; like procedures for experimental technology. Beyond that, really, what were colors and symbols when the mission stayed the same? They were rising from the ashes of an internal war no one knew was being waged; rising better than ever. Genetically-superior experimental subjects, straight from the horror-fest over on Pragia's Asphodel facility, were taking on the most influential human organization in the cosmos and streamlining it to suit their own purposes.

Naturally, things ran smoother than ever before.

Sleeper cells were activated, favors called in, organizations formed, laws were rammed through Alliance parliament by puppet-members—all in order to create a place where those who were, 'different' were allowed to live and train in peace.

Directly from that effort came the commissioning of Jon Grissom Academy. Funds were rerouted to support the effort. It grew and grew; the Alliance parliament footing the bill for partial control of the newly minted, "Ascension Program," something Naruto thought was a bit of a joke as his people were in so deep nothing, not even new legislation and Alliance oversight, could dislodge them.

Ships were built in the new style with new colors, weapons manufactured, alliances were forged amongst Terminus rebels, mercenary groups subsumed into their amoeba-like mass—and the Alliance knew nothing of what grew under their noses, under the Devil's careful watch.

Yet Humanity grew stronger, day by day, and six months passed, unaware. Naruto Namikaze, the elusive leader of the paramilitary organization Phoenix, readied, waited, and prepared. Prepared for the day the eldritch horrors from deep space would arrive, just as his aquatic allies on Despoina had foretold.

He felt their truth in his bones, felt their presence resonate with the power inside him that flowed through his chakra system and swirled behind the inner gates locked inside his body. He was of the Shinju, they felt it, knew it, and welcomed him like ancient kin despite their differences. At the heart of it, they sought to balance the cycle of hatred between synthetics and organics, something Naruto knew almost nothing about.

Frankly, he was struggling just to quell the hatred among one race, let along them all.

Naruto had a hunch that the answer to the two biggest riddles; the two Cycles, lay inside him. The first problem; that of organics and synthetics, was something he knew he could solve—the only question was, how to enact his plan? The second riddle, the Uchiha/Senju cycle of hatred, ran far, far deeper—but the answer, he thought, lay with humans.

But more than that lay the machinations of ancient entities that had grown fat with power—he had to do something about all of them.

The Shinju, the Calamity from Below, was a protector of the deep planetary consciousness; the Leviathans, his allies on Despoina, were ancient aquatic beings not content to anchor themselves in one place. They had to move about space as through water.

A Leviathan's abilities manifested and grew through benevolent rule over thrall species, while the Shinju absorbed dark energy into its nigh-divine self like a Dyson sphere. The both of them were at the apex of evolution and so Naruto, in their eyes, had Avatar-status for his connection to the Shinju—and that meant big-time protection. After all, there weren't too many apex predator races left in the cosmos…

…and speaking of predators, the Leviathans from the Deep spoke of another race of being, the Reapers, who would be directed by a Harbinger. The synthetic consciousness, Reapers, escaped their control and plagued them to this day. Eldritch bioships, horrors in deep space, were waiting for the next cycle to begin.

The dark thought of them kept him awake at night sometimes.

An avatar, the Harbinger, would appear to usher in the newest Reaping. There had to be a leader strong enough to unite everyone to meet and oppose the unstoppable juggernauts waiting to crush almost all life in the universe.

That leader was Naruto and he needed to be ready, needed to be at the right place, and at the right time—for missing the Harbinger of Destruction meant being two steps behind in the race for conquest. And those two steps meant doom for everyone; and he couldn't let that happen.

It would be Konoha all over again—and he wouldn't have his uncle helping him escape destruction a second time. Naruto refused to fail. If he expected to win, than his next stop was Council space.

The Citadel.

A/N: Hope you all enjoyed the first chapter of a wild ride. Canon will be immediately thrown out the window upon reaching the beginning of the first Mass Effect. BE WARNED. These ripples reach further than you can ever imagine.

A note on Shepard: she is female, paragon, and you can just imagine how a Paragon female Shepard will react to a very, very Renegade Naruto. He is a medical ninja by trade, has been trained by...someone...dark, and has tasted something that has altered him irretrievably. Will sparks or fists fly between the two?

No worries, although this has a plot centered on romance for only important reasons, it won't make you gag, nor will it be hard to swallow. This is dark realism and I intend to accomplish what I set out to by making you sit on the edge of your seat wondering; "What the fuck will happen?" I'm trying to channel George R.R. a bit...without the awful writer's block and constant death. Leave me a review and let me know how I'm doing.

I'll address the inevitable issues of, 'how powerful is Naruto?'

Right now? Very powerful.

Was he always this way? Hell no.

How skilled is he with his powers? Not very.

Will he get better? Of course.

This is the Reaper invasion how I would have invaded, had I been ordering the fleets around. Brutal. To the point. Naruto will have to be sharp to outmaneuver and outwit a millions-of-years old Harbinger. He'll also need to be hellaciously powerful, which he is, but what good is being powerful if you cannot use it to its fullest? That is only a part of his journey.

Q: Where the fuck is Kurama? You'll find out, just shut your mouth and read. (PS. he's not inside Naruto)

I need to say this; EVERY SINGLE THING I DO HAS A FUCKING REASON. It's not cosmetic, there is a reason behind every cosmetic change I make to Naruto. I'm trying to achieve a look and feel without outright telling. That's what good writers attempt to do, they show you and don't tell you. Draw conclusions about things based on how I'm writing the details.

Finally, review for gods sake. The percentage of people who review are less than 1% and that is shameful. Leave a review, even if it's to say you liked it or hated it. I have to say, reviews make me update faster-the more I get, the more motivated I am to write the next one. I'm super distracted with a lot of things in my life and reviews keep me focused on churning out the product. I'd like to reach a hundred reviews if I can, but who knows?

Anyway, R&R and hope you enjoyed.

Cheers,

Arte