~A/N: Hey, got a new story here, this one's a Naruto/Mass Effect Crossover, making me the 39th one on the site! :D I recently bought ME3 and this idea wouldn't stop hounding me until I typed it out. I don't believe this kind of thing has been done before (at least, in terms of getting Naruto into the ME universe), so we'll see how it goes.

Also, don't spoil anything from ME3 for me! I started another ME2 run because ME3 pretty much sucks unless you import . so no spoilers!

~One And Only Disclaimer of the Story: I own neither Naruto nor Mass Effect. They are owned by Kishimoto and Bioware respectively.

~Project Crimson~

~A Naruto/Mass Effect Crossover~

~Chapter 1: Recovery~

Naruto painfully staggered away from the crater that had been made only minutes before, dust that had been thrown hundreds of feet into the air just beginning to settle around him. His skin was blackened, he could both feel and hear it crackling like paper every time he moved. Nearly every nerve in his body screamed at him to stop, to lie down, to just close his eyes and let sleep overcome him.

And despite all of that, he couldn't have been happier. Madara had finally been defeated. Their final showdown had been long and brutal. It had decimated nearly everything within several miles of the epicenter. But Naruto had come out on top in the end. It would cost Naruto his life, but as long as nobody else had to give their lives fighting a madman's war Naruto was happy.

After almost a minute of agonizing stumbling, Naruto finally staggered enough that he lost balance and fell backwards into the dirt, the impact causing too much pain for him to even bother attempting to stand back up.

He stared at the sky, darkened by the floating dust and debris in the air for several minutes, and briefly wondered if there was a place for him out there. Where did shinobi go when they died? He supposed he would find out in just a few minutes.

Naruto lay there in the dust and accepted his fate, closing his eyes just as a shadow enveloped his figure. He couldn't be bothered to open his eyes again, but he heard muffled shouting and then a faint stinging sensation before the bliss of unconsciousness descended upon him.

~~PC~~

The Illusive Man was not the kind of person who could be easily surprised. His information network was more extensive than even the infamous Shadow Broker's. As a result, there were not many things that he didn't know of or at the very least expect.

That being said, when one of his lower-ranking officers informed him of an exceedingly large energy spike on a fairly unknown planet on the rim of the galaxy, he was intrigued.

"Exactly how large is this energy spike if it warrants contacting me directly?" The Illusive Man questioned through his communications channel.

"Sir, the men who picked it up on sensors told me it was the highest spike they'd ever seen. They said it was nearly off of the charts." The unnamed officer responded.

The Illusive Man raised an eyebrow—not that the man he was speaking with could see it. "Have they ascertained the source of the anomaly?" He questioned the officer again.

"Yes, sir, they've taken the liberty of acquiring it before contacting you," The man began somewhat uncertainly. It was for good reason; the Illusive Man – or at least a high-ranking officer – was generally contacted before any major decisions were made on how to proceed. 'Taking the liberty' of doing something potentially disastrous before it was relayed through a higher-up usually ended in unemployment for the guilty—which often ended in death.

"Sir…" The officer continued, unsure. "The source was a living creature – a human, from what the soldiers told me – and they say he's in very bad condition, unconscious but still alive. They've used as much medi-gel as will help, but the medic stationed on the cruiser says he's practically been burned to a crisp and he'll only last for a few days maximum. They're requesting that something be done." He finished.

The Illusive Man could tell that the officer was nervous.

"Send me the records of the energy spike." Was all he said in response.

"Yes sir, right away." The officer went silent for several moments, then the Illusive Man's omni-tool chimed and a small holographic display appeared with the records of the anomaly in question. The Illusive Man's eyes actually widened a fraction at the display.

"Are you sure these are the correct records?" He inquired.

"Yes, sir."

"Hmmmm… Remarkable," The Illusive Man mumbled more to himself than to the officer he was speaking with. "I will send someone over to retrieve him as soon as possible, please inform the soldiers who found him and tell them someone will arrive within the next day." He finished.

"Yes sir!" With that, the officer sent him the coordinates of the soldiers' current location in orbit around the planet the anomaly was found on and ended the connection.

The Illusive Man quickly initiated a hailing frequency, getting a response almost immediately. A hologram of a dark-haired woman in skintight clothing appeared.

"Yes, sir?"

"Miranda, how is Commander Shepard's progress at the moment?" He questioned.

"Well, it's slow going, though we are making steady progress sir. But you already know that. It has been over a year since we recovered her." She stated with a raised eyebrow.

"Indeed," He responded. "Would you be able to leave Shepard for several days, possibly weeks?"

"Yes, sir, if I put Wilson in charge I could be absent for some time, though progress would be slower while I'm absent." She responded with a questioning tone.

"Good, I'd like you to investigate something that a few of my men have found on a planet near the rim of the galaxy. They investigated an energy spike and found the source to be what they say is a human. From what I've gathered, his state is very similar to the state Shepard was in when we recovered him." He said with a hint of finality.

"Sir?" Miranda questioned, somewhat shocked.

"I want you to go and retrieve him from the soldiers and stabilize him like you did Shepard. From the energy readings, he is quite possibly the most powerful biotic in the galaxy, and we may be able to learn something from him. I'd like you to leave within the next few hours. I'm sending you the coordinates now."

"Yes, sir." And with Miranda's response, the Illusive Man ended the transmission. He would not have Miranda work on the 'human' they had found for too long – Shepard was still the top priority – but it would be interesting to see how things played out. Perhaps this newfound creature could be of some use.

~~PC~~

Miranda sighed as her shuttle docked with the small cruiser the soldiers were stationed on. The Illusive Man was sending her out on an assignment that could take days or even weeks? That time could be better spent on Shepard!

However, it wasn't Miranda's place to disobey the Illusive Man's orders. The most she could do was get this fiasco over with as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The airlock hissed as her shuttle docked with the larger spacecraft and she sighed once again as she stepped through the parting doors and onto the craft, causing several soldiers in the immediate vicinity to begin eyeing her like a piece of meat.

One of the crew members – a female human – rolled her eyes with a hint of disgust and stepped forward.

"Miranda Lawson?" She inquired. Miranda nodded in confirmation. "Come with me. You'll probably want to see this." The crew member finished as she began leading Miranda through the corridors.

"We found him on the surface," She began informing Miranda as they strode through the halls and into an elevator. "A few soldiers were sent down to investigate an extremely large energy spike and he was the source. Though the condition they found him in was… well, it wasn't pretty. I've done what I can to stabilize him, but the equipment on this ship isn't advanced enough and he's slowly degenerating," She said as they exited the elevator and made their way through several more halls. "Frankly, I have no idea how he's still breathing." She finished as they entered the room were the 'anomaly' was kept.

Miranda was quite simply surprised—for three reasons, actually. The first – and less important – was that she had been expecting the crew to be exaggerating a little, or that things weren't as bad as they had made them out to be.

In reality, they were much worse.

The boy – for that was what he looked like, though she couldn't tell exactly – had quite literally been burned to a crisp. His skin was blackened, and it was peeling in some places as well. The majority of his hair had been burned off, with blackened and mangled patches here and there along his scalp, and on some parts of his body his skin had been incinerated off completely and the blackened and burnt muscle underneath was showing. She honestly didn't know if he was in better or worse condition than Shepard was when they found her. At least Shepard had been wearing armor.

The second was that the boy was a human. She had seen the energy readings, since the Illusive Man had sent them to her before her departure, and she had refused to believe that the source of the spike was a human. However, the boy lying on a table nearly burnt to a crisp in front of her was undoubtedly human.

That being said, the energy spike was over seven times greater than the highest energy readings that Miranda herself had managed. The only possible explanation was that whatever the boy had done had been so powerful that it resulted in his current state.

The third reason was also the simplest. He was still alive and breathing, although it was definitely labored and very shallow. Miranda was amazed at the boy's sheer will to live. She was fairly sure that by the time Shepard was at this stage, he had already been dead.

She sighed again.

"Okay, I'll take him and see what I can do. Thank you for your help." She said in dismissal of the female crew member. Several Cerberus soldiers filed into the room and aided Miranda in preparing the gravely wounded boy for transfer from the cruiser to her shuttle.

She resisted the urge to slam several soldiers against the wall with her biotics for allowing their eyes to wander as they made their way back onto the shuttle with the injured boy in tow. Sometimes she hated her father for making her 'perfect'.

As she disembarked from her shuttle and stepped back onto her starship, she ordered the navigator to enter the coordinates that the Illusive Man had recently given her. He wanted the boy placed in a station on the rim of the galaxy, as he didn't want anybody else picking up energy spikes from the boy. He was to be placed in a station similar to the one Shepard was currently occupying – though on a smaller scale – and was to undergo almost the same treatment as well. The Illusive Man had dubbed it 'Project Crimson'.

Miranda moved the boy to the ship's med-bay as quickly as possible and immediately began attempting to get the boy stabilized at the very least. The chief of medical staff on the starship assisted her in getting the boy situated for the several-hour long trip to their destination. Miranda started with an initial scan, hoping beyond hope that severe burns were the extent of the boy's injuries and there was little if any internal damage.

Unfortunately for the both of them, nearly half of the bones in his body had been damaged in some way, and some of the muscle tissue and ligaments had been torn beyond a human's natural healing ability. Several of his organs had been bruised as well, and many of the blood vessels and veins in his limbs had been severed or severely bruised, likely due to harsh impacts in those areas.

Miranda groaned and resisted the urge to repeatedly bash her head into the nearest solid object. This boy was going to take a lot longer than a mere week to stabilize.

Miranda suppressed those thoughts and began focusing instead on stabilizing the boy as quickly as possible. She fired up her biotic amplifiers and organized her medical tools.

It was time to get to work.

~~PC~~

Miranda once again entered her private quarters on the station that was her temporary home, striding immediately into the bathroom. She removed her skintight clothing and barely spared the reflection of her 'perfect' body in the mirror a second glance as she entered the shower and turned the hot water on.

Sure, there were decontamination stations placed throughout the station that removed the need for bathing as long as you took a walk every so often, but she enjoyed showering more because of the feel of the water cascading down her body. Decontamination just didn't make her feel as clean as showering did.

It had been just over a week and a half since she had arrived at the station with the mysterious young man, and she had just that morning managed to get him stabilized. Now that he didn't require constant medical attention from either her or her assistant, she could get a good nights rest and relax a little bit before diving back into her work.

The boy was… remarkable, to say the least. Compared to Shepard, this project was much more interesting. Bringing Shepard back from the dead had been an amazing feat, that much was true, but after she was revived and the correct implants were in place it was pretty much a waiting game. All they could do was observe her condition and monitor her progress, perhaps altering a few things here and there.

However, this young man the Cerberus soldiers had found on a rim planet… he was far from a normal human. She was beginning to have doubts that he was human at all.

When she had done another scan on him upon his arrival and situation into the station, it had been revealed that several of his bones were either partially or completely repaired—with no outside help whatsoever. Hell, one of his ribs that had nearly been snapped in half only a few hours before was now as good as new! Several of the bones in his hands and feet had also mended themselves—they were small bones, with minor fractures and breaks, but they still shouldn't have healed so fast.

She had dismissed it as something that the medic on the soldiers' cruiser had managed to accomplish, whether it was intended or just luck she couldn't be sure. However, over the next few days, she began noticing the same thing—and it wasn't just the bones that were 'miraculously' healing either. Some of his internal organs' conditions had improved by leaps and bounds in only a few short days. A non-fatal yet still extremely problematic rupture in his intestinal tract had healed itself completely in less than a day!

Over the first several days, she had bounced back and forth between helping to stabilize the boy and determining what the hell was causing such amazing regeneration. Near the end of the fifth day, she had done several scans and a few had managed to pick up a unique energy signature coming off of the boy like a blanket.

Acting on a hunch, she had one of the technicians stationed near the lab do a cross-check of the readings of both the new energy signature and the signature of the energy spike that led Cerberus to the boy in the first place.

The next morning, the technician had approached with some astonishing news. According to the readings and the cross-check, behind the initial biotic signature of the energy spike, there was another energy signature that matched this one, as well as a third signature that was slightly weaker than the other two.

Throughout the next few days, Miranda performed several dozen more thorough scans of the young man and found confirmation that the boy had three different energy signatures. One matched the signature of biotic energy, but the other two were complete unknowns—though they were remarkably similar to each other.

She managed to piece together through both scans and observation that one of the unknown signatures – the stronger one – was what was healing the boy. After acquiring that information, she focused her medical efforts on the large bone fractures, as well as organ damage, leaving this 'healing energy' to work on the less serious injuries.

The morning of the eleventh day, she and her chief assistant had declared him stable. He wouldn't heal by himself – or at least, if he did, even with his remarkable healing it would take many years to accomplish – but he wouldn't die due to his injuries.

They had spent the rest of that day discerning the best and most prominent areas to place several kinds of implants. Most notable were the neural implants – which would revive any nerve tissue that had been damaged – and skeletal implants, which would strengthen his skeletal structure, as well as aiding in the reforming of damaged bones.

The young man was certainly intriguing. Miranda was actually tempted to request to be reassigned to the boy's medical staff instead of Shepard's, but she knew the Illusive Man would never grant that request. After all, Shepard was an irreplaceable icon to humanity.

Turning off the water and stepping out of the shower to dry herself, Miranda merely slipped on some undergarments before crawling into bed. The Illusive Man had assigned her to the boy for 'three to four weeks, depending on his condition', and she was going to stay here for as long as she could—especially if the boy had any more surprises in store.

~~PC~~

"Miranda Lawson?"

"Yes. You're Doctor Joseph Kelaar, I assume?"

"You would be correct in that assumption, Miss Lawson."

The man – Doctor Joseph Kelaar – stepped out of the airlock and into the station where Project Crimson was based, briefly shaking hands with Miranda. She gestured for him to follow her and led him though the space station to the medical room the young man was situated in. It was a quiet journey, neither of them initiating a conversation. As they entered the room, several automated arms finalized the integration of the neural and skeletal implants into the boy's systems.

"This is the boy you have sent me the information on?" The man asked. He was a fairly young human male, as well as tall, with dark brown hair fashioned into a short ponytail. Doctor Kelaar was one of the best medical personal Cerberus had to offer – other than Miranda – and he would be taking over care of the boy while Miranda went back to oversee Shepard's progress once again.

"That's correct. He's been a very… surprising patient, to say the least." She responded. She was actually kind of disappointed. She didn't want to go back to overseeing Shepard at this point, the young man before her was just too amazing. Every week they found something new and completely unknown related to the boy. While he was certainly human, he was definitely not an ordinary one. He had more biotic power than most asari for christ's sake!

Compared to him, Shepard would be boring as hell. However, Miranda would not go against the Illusive Man's wishes. If he wanted her to return to Project Lazarus, she would do so.

"Yes… I must say, the information you have sent me so far has been… strange. I find it kind of hard to believe." He said with a playful smirk.

"I found it hard to believe as well, until I saw it with my own eyes. Just be prepared for the unexpected with him, he's given the medical staff several surprises already." She responded.

"Well, I'll leave him in your care then," Miranda continued. "I've already packed my belongings, so I'll be leaving shortly." She said, moving past the doctor and towards the door.

"Have a pleasant trip…" He said, gazing at the boy with a glint in his eyes that Miranda didn't fail to miss. It looked like eagerness, but there was something else in there, too… Oh well, it wasn't Miranda's job to care for him anymore, the priority now was getting back to Shepard.

She quickly boarded the shuttle, taking it back to her starship and beginning her journey back to the station where Project Lazarus was based.

Miranda just couldn't shake this feeling she had… something about that boy was important. She just knew it.

~~PC~~

"Where would you like to start, Doctor Kelaar?" The chief medical assistant – a young blonde woman – questioned the new medical head.

The man glanced once again as his datapads, mulling over several thoughts before deciding.

"I think I'll take this first day to settle in and get used to the station, Miss Addler. We'll begin getting him back to full health first thing tomorrow."

"Of course, sir." She responded, before striding out of the room to inform the rest of the medical staff.

Doctor Kelaar sauntered up to the unconscious boy.

"Yes, my boy, first thing we need to do it get you back to full health," He began. "Then we may begin the testing…"

~~PC~~

~A/N: Well, here it is. This is more of a 'Prolouge' than a first chapter, but eh, whatever. Reviews are always appreciated and help motivate me to write more, so click the button!

Also (for those that have been wondering), the reason that I haven't updated my other two fics for a while (or uploaded another that already has the first few chapters typed up) is because the flash drive that I use to store all of my fics on is gone. I left it at school on the last day because my final was on it and I forgot it in the computer w stupid me… Anyways, while I'm in the process of getting it back, I won't be able to update any of the other stories until I have it, as I don't feel like typing another few thousand words for each story =3 I should have it in a few days though, so hopefully I'll update soon! (Though I may get obsessed with this one and slam out a few chapters before I do anything else X3

Original Post ~ 6/28/2012 ~ 3,655 words

Edited Post ~ 7/22/2012 ~ 3,905 words