AN: This fic is a crossover of Naruto and Mass Effect (3) Universes,

Liara decodes a part of the data she managed to save from the Illusive Man and finds out that the Protheans tried to get help from a powerful being that could destroy the reapers. Shepard decides to go to the planet and try the same thing.

-xx-

The UT-47 Kodiak Shuttle landed on the grassy field that was the designated landing zone, just outside the big forest.

"This place has some really big trees" Vega said as he stepped out of the shuttle first, keeping his assault rifle in his hands, ready for action.

And he was right, the trees that surrounded the small clearing they landed on were dozens if not hundreds of feet tall each, and some were big enough to hide an Atlas Mech.

Jane Shepard was the next one out of the shuttle, followed by the rest of her team: Liara, Tali and EDI.

"Alright, since there's more than just three of us we'll go in formation, Vega, you have point, EDI will take the left flank and I'll take the right, Tali and Liara will take the rear."

She waited a few moments to see if there were any objections and checked all her gear.

"Yeah, put the big bad man up front to be a meatshield for all you ladies..." Vega, of course, tried lighting the mood a bit with his jokes but only managed to get a few glares and a short speech from both EDI and Liara about their lack of gender.

"Alright, move out, we could get the info about the Illusive Man's base any minute, we need to finish quickly. Cortez! We'll try and clear a landing site closer to the objective if we can, for now you can take off until we need you."

"Yes, ma'am!" Cortez sounded from the shuttle and promptly took off to fly around and maybe gather some scans even with the interference on the planet.

They took off and walked throught the forest towards the center of the interference and possibly the power that the Protheans talked about.

It proved hard to keep a good formation while walking on uneven ground of a forest, though it was a bit of a surprise that there was enought light with all the trees around.

"This place looks a lot like Earth, before the industrial era, that is." Shepard said, mainly talking to Liara since she was the one that told them about this place.

"The log mentioned Humans, maybe the Protheans took some samples from Earth and planted them here, fifty thousand years seems like enough time for the genetic material to spread around."

"That seems highly probable, after my initial analysis most of the plant life here is mainly identical to the Earth plant life." EDI added her own 'thoughts'.

The log Liara mentioned was something she managed to salvage from the Mars base. She had been working on it furiously since it was one of the few things the Illusive Man didn't take, it turned out to be a badly fragmented personal log of a Prothean explorer.

Because of the damage, most of it was not salvageable, but the parts she did manage to recover told of a great power that was on this planet and that it could probably stop the Reapers. It also mentioned the Human race later on in the log but without context there wasn't much to go on.

Still, a power that could stop the Reapers was exactly what they were looking for.

"There's just something creepy about this place, I don't like it." Vega called in from the front.

"!" The sound seemed to be a call of an animal and they all stopped since it seemed close. An alien lifeform was often something dangerous and required full attention.

"I think that's the first sign of life on this planet..." Tali commented nervously, they were after all, in a big forest, there should have been a bunch of animals around by now.

It turned out to be a simple crow, it flew from the forest on their left side and rose up to a branch in front of them where it landed on a shoulder of a man that wasn't there seconds ago.

The said man suddenly had six weapons pointed at him, he stood calm and petted the bird, not looking at the armed people below him. They couldn't see him very well because of the distance but what they could see was that he wore some sort of a black cloack with a red pattern on it and had black hair. And he looked like a human from a distance, that made little sense.

"Did anyone even notice him? He wasn't there when I looked at that branch earlier." Vega asked quietly, both surprised and pissed that someone snuck up on him.

He was answered by the man, who still didn't look at them.

"You are not wanted here, leave."

"We apologize for tresspassing but we came here for a reason. We need help against the Reapers."

Shepard was going to continue her speech, how the Reapers were evil and wanted to destroy everything, how the organics need to band together to stand a chance... how desperate they were when it came to help. The man looked at her and stopped petting the crow once he heard the word 'Reaper'.

"So they are back... good; you made him interested, I'm glad I wasn't ordered to kill you right away." and them he just 'dissolved' into a murder of crows, litteraly.

"Did he just... fall apart into a hundred birds?" Shepard asked what almost everyone was thinking.

EDI was the only one that wasn't stunned, instead she was trying to figure out how it happened.

Far in front of them there was a loud noise that sounded like an explosion that shook them out of their trance.

"Let's go, we don't have all day."

And so they kept walking, towards the source of the interference and towards the place where that explosion just happened.

This time they were all looking towards every single branch of every tree they passed by, waiting for the man to appear again.

Eventually they came to a rather large tree and went around it, on the other side was a small desert.

"I don't think this pile of sand was here when we were in orbit. EDI?" Shepard asked, this mission was getting even more strange.

"No, we landed on the closest clear area near the source of the interference. The only logical explanation is that the explosion we heard is the source of this sand. Speaking of which, we have passed about 70% of the designated path towards the source now."

Vega was about to make a witty remark about explosions that can make deserts when he noticed something move about ten meters in front of him.

He was the first one to point a gun at it, the rest of the group was spread out and taking aim in seconds.

The sands shifted and a person slowly came from within the sand. It seemed to be a young human male with short blood-red hair and cyan pupiless eyes.

"You are visitors, you are not allowed past me until you prove yourself. The ones that called themselves Protheans proved themselves but failed to understand afterwards."

"You know of the Protheans? And what do you mena by proving ourselves and understanding?"

"The Protheans had to go through me in order to advance to the next one. If you do not understand in time you will leave; and you will prove yourself through battle, prepare yourself."

He didn't give them much time to process the words that came from him before a a patch of sand rose up and lunged straight towards Vega like a snake. Since he was in the middle of the semi-circle surrounding the red-haired boy he couldn't jump to the sides without risking anyone else so he had to jump back.

Everyone else stared for a few precious moments before they aimed their weapons and fired at the snake-like sand construct.

Once Vega managed to get up he started firing as well, but guns didn't affect sand much, and the kinetic bariers weren't designed to deal with relatively slow-moving waves of sand. There was also the fact that their armor would probably get full of sand if they got hit by a wave.

The red-haired man still stood with his arms crossed and observed with bored eyes the pathetic struggle against his weakest sand attack.

He dismissed his attack and outstretched his right arm towards the edge of the desert. The sand at the edge moved and grabbed a tree around its trunk. With a simple movement of his hand the large tree was ripped out of the ground and thrown towards the group, it was large enough to crush them all at once.

The tree fell but luckily didn't crush anyone. It even offered them some well needed cover from the dangerous red-head.

"We didn't come here to fight!" Shepard tried yelling out but got no response. She was about to make quick plan for getting through this alive but before she could do that, in front of her very eyes Tali was sucked into the desert.

"Tali! Spread out and keep moving, we have to finish this so we can get her out of there!"

They quickly circled their opponent while firing at him, their attack only made him go on the defence, making a sphere of sand around him that solidified against their attacks.

"Switch to Incendiary! It works against the sand!" Vega yelled while dodging another sand attack.

And it really did work against the sand, some of it turned to glass and fell useless but it was quickly replaced. Even concentrating fire on a single spot didn't work.

"Liara, try getting that sand off!" Shepard commanded and Liara used her biotics to try and strip the sand away.

She suceeded only partially but it was enough for EDI to find a weak point in the barrier and fire a single pistol round into the boy's leg.

The barrier collapsed and the attacks stopped. The boy was now kneeling down, holding his wounded leg without any indication that he was in pain.

"That was an easy test, you came here with hope so it was naive of me to think that would change if you lost someone dear to you."

The sand quickly retreated into the sinkhole that formed under him, leaving a confused Tali looking around. Soon the boy was standing there, his leg not bleeding but his clothes clearly showing damage.

"Why did you attack us when we didn't come here to fight?" Liara asked,

"You came to ask him to fight for you, he would not even consider fighting for someone who is weak."

"Who is him? And who are you?"

"I was once the prison of the First, he is now the Last one himself."

"What does that mean?"

"It will be explained if you can get to him."

"How many more tests are there?"

"Mine was the first his will be the last."

"Dammit, how many more of you are there?"

"He is the only one alive, the rest of us died more than a hundred and thirty millenia ago." with that, he turned into sand and fell into the sinkhole.

"What the fuck is going on on this crazy planet?"

"The more I think about all of this, the less it makes sense. Let's try and be careful from now on, the first person we met turned into a flock of birds, the second could control sand, the third one will probably be just as unpredictable." While Shepard was saying all this she signaled to the rest of the group to get in formation and continue on. They had to either get around or over the downed tree that blocked their path.

"Thank you for the compliment but I'm not as showy as Uchiha-san or Gaara-san." The female voice came from the other side of the tree, they saw the woman shortly once she climbed to stand on the tree and look at them.

She was young and wore some sort of form-fitting dark uniform, her blond hair was braided and she had some sort of a metal plate over her forehead.

As usual, all weapons were pointed at her, only this time the group spread out a lot faster, hoping for any advantage they could get.

"There will be no need for that, I already decided what kind of a test I'll have for you." Everyone kept quiet while she looked them over.

"You, the big guy, get up here, you and I are having a one-on-one fight."

"What?" Vega looked really confused now, if the first two could control birds and sand, what kind of crazy supernatural power did this girl have? He looked towards Shepard,

"Commander, what the hell?"

Shepard looked around the group but didn't find any objections.

"Are you deaf? Get up here, you and I are fighting. This tree will be the ring, I want to see what you're made of."

Vega gave his weapons to EDI and climbed the tree. He had a feeling that this would end in pain for him. He stood a few meters away from her and raised his hands in a standard fighting stance every marine was taught.

"Good, no weapons, only hand-to-hand, I already know you can't use chakra so there would be no use in that kind of fight; time limit is three minutes, if you can survive that long, I'll let you all pass." She got in her stance.

"Begin!" she waited for his attack but Vega was playing defensively, he had no idea how strong she was.

She started with a kick towards the head, Vega was expecting something strange to happen while he blocked; the only strange thing was the force behind her kick, it felt more like being kicked by a mech than anything else.

He stood his ground and blocked as much as he could, though his arms started hurting soon after. Deciding that he had enough, he tried attacking.

She avoided every attack he threw at her without much effort on her part, she was just too fast, strong and generally good at fighting that she didn't even need to try. Maybe talking would make her lose her concentration?

"Why are we even being tested?" He threw a few punches that she effortlessly avoided.

"Gaara already told you, he won't fight for weaklings, he also refuses to be thought of as a weapon, there's a piece of advice for you, if you piss him off you won't be getting back home." She tried a simple kick to his side that he managed to absorb, thank God for the armor.

"Gaara is the name of the sand guy, then? What's your name?" He made a feint to the left and attacked from the right, she didn't fall for it.

"Nii Yugito... at least that was what I was called back in the day..."She defended against a few of his punches.

"Back in the day?" He tried a kick while she was on the defensive but she jumped over it.

"When I was alive." She pushed him away with a weak kick to the torso.

"You look a bit too good for a corpse." Vega almost smiled at the face she made.

"Flattery won't get you anywhere, and I'm not a corpse..." Her tone said that she was offended, her punches said the same thing.

"What are you then?" Vega asked, trying to redeem himself.

"A part of something greater."

"Huh, and how many tests are there?" He tried to go to attack but was forced backwards.

"That's one of them, patience, will you give up before the last one?" Vega tried one more time to deliver a punch.

She ducked under his punch and fiercely kicked him in the stomach, making him fly back towards a thick branch that stopped his flight rather suddenly.

He only closed his eyes for a few parts of a second due to the pain, once he opened them, there was a fist right in front of his face.

"Time is up... I was hoping for more out of you but then again, you're no Shinobi." She picked up Vega with a single hand and jumped down to leave him with his team.

Before they could as any questions she turned to the tree and did something with her hands that they couldn't see.

Suddenly she was enveloved in blue flames, the flames grew in both size and intensity before they started moving.

Once their vision focused, they saw that the flames resembled a feline with two tails. The big fiery cat picked up the tree and threw it away to the side, then she roared loudly making a shockwave that cleared even more of the forest in front of them.

The cat turned to them.

"I was once known as the prison of the Second one, I hope you can get to the end, for everyone's sake." with that she disappeared.

"I ask again, what the fuck is happening here? It feels like we're in a really bad fairy tale!" Vega yelled from the ground where he was using some medi-gel to take care of the bruises and cuts he got during the fight.

And so they went forward, despite the dangers, the people that gave them these 'tests' didn't seem to be openly hostile. As irresponsible as it was, they went forward towards the dangers.

After a few minutes a kid stepped out behind a small tree in front of them. He had dusty blond hair and a long scar under his left eye, he seemed to be 10 years old.

He didn't say anything, and they didn't point their weapons at him, some because he looked so young, some because they didn't want to provoke anyone after they saw what Nii could do.

His hand came together and moved very fast before he slammed them on the ground; from under him came water, it was like a small geyser that started flooding the area. He didn't look at them until the area they were standing in was flooded.

Obviously, the group was vary, clutching their weapons but still not taking aim.

The kid did more of those hand-signals and the water came alive. They were all swallowed up to their necks, their weapons taken from them.

"One of you will continue, the rest will stay here. If the one who is chosen does not get back in 2 hours, the rest will drown. Choose."

AN: So basically, they met a genjutsu of Itachi, Gaara, Yugito and Yagura, all of them are dead, and Gaara said that only the 'tenth one' is alive, so that would mean that the Juubi is the only living thing on the planet and he can control the other parts of him in a way that makes them manifest for a short while.

I was planning on going through all of the jinchuuriki but ran out of ideas for the tests they would give the crew...

Ideas are welcome as always.