A/N: So, I've been going over reviews, and an anonymous reviewer said something that really resonated with me. I love to write. But sometimes, I feel that this gift owns me, rather than I, owning it. Its like a beast inside me, this urge to create, but I can't control it very well, which results in a LOT of new stories. So as of last night, and continuing throughout the week, I'm purging stories that won't be continued, or works that no one enjoys anymore.
Take the latest update for A Fly in the Ointment. Almost nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nadda. Only a meager three reviews at this time for almost five thousand words and a week's worth of work. I don't know if its my mail client being stupid or what, but if not...that's kinda depressing. I mean, I don't fault people for not reviewing and all, but I write this stuff FOR you guys. Not me. I love to bring the joy of literary works to people, but...
...it kinda hurts when no one tells me what they think, ya know?
Anywho, let me know which ones you feel should be continued, before its too late! Don't worry, many of the major ones will remain, but anything from 2008-2009 is likely going out the window with all the rest of the trash, never to be seen again. This may seem sudden I know, but I'm only purging the forgotten fics that no one cares for. Fear not, its not going to be immediate, but it WILL happen, I simply wanted to get this out as a forewarning.
This will be of very few new stories I plan to release, god willing. If I have an idea, I plan to make it a damn good one before I just toss it out there, as I devote myself to my other works, soon to number into the hundreds, and potentially dozens as I whittle them down. I need to reassess why I want to write, for the joy of it, and I can't do that by letting you guys down with old, crappy stories I wrote in my early days.
LET THE NEW ERA BEGIN! Also yes, I'm introducing a new character here...
And so, I happily bring you the next chapter of...
...BRING DOWN THE SKY! People who were expecting shit to hit the fan? Here it comes...bombs are dropped! And all kinds of insanity ensues! Hope it makes ya smile! Uzumaki Crossover will be on point for the next chapter once more as well =D
"Nuclear fire, eh? I like the sound of that."
~?
Bombs Away
"YOU!" Jack's hand grasped Naruto by the collar of his jacket and bodily hauled him away from Tali's prone form, drawing him into her with a vicious yank. Her eyes aglow with biotic power, body wreathed in eerie azure relief, she looked ever bit an angel of death, come to claim his soul. It was both incredibly terrifying and arousing, all at once. In his head, he knew he could have wriggled free from the smaller girl easily, but something kept him rooted where he stood, looking down into the blazing orbs of his first and only friend in the world.
In hindsight, heading for the hills might have been the better option. Really should have done that.
"You," she started slowly, infusing every syllable with subtle menace, "have some fuckin' 'splaining to do!"
Naruto started sweating buckets.
"Eh...doc? A little help, here?"
Jack bared her teeth and hissed.
"You. Out."
Chakwas darted out of the medbay and locked the door behind her. The phantom cussed.
"Traitor!"
Jack shook him before he could continue, turning the words into a strangled gurgle.
Hard.
"Start talking, bub. Now."
He gulped.
"W-W-W-Well, its kinda complicated...?"
"I've got all the time in the world." she released him. "Talk."
Naruto sighed, pinching his nose. "You might not like what I have to say."
"Hey, I'm a big girl." she sniffed, her eyes flashing with renewed fire. "I can take it."
He very much doubted that she could. She'd always been volatile.
"More like take it out on me..."
"What was that?"
So he told her.
Everything.
From the time that he'd left her in that pod so long ago, to being attacked. Losing his arm in the assault, being found by the quarians. Receiving a new limb in place of the one he'd lost, becoming the Phantom of the Terminus. His friendship with Tali, one that escalated into something more. The insanity of Feros and fighting the Thorian...all of it.
And by the end of it all, Jack was silent.
Naruto hated that silence, despised it with every fiber of his being. He had fought through Feros, torn apart Purgatory with nothing but grit and determination, witnessed the technological horrors of Noveria...
...but nothing compared to this.
When faced with the fury of Jack, all courage abandoned him.
There was just something about her when she was angry; something that made him want to go hide under a rock. Of course, it was perfectly natural to fear the wrath of a woman he told himself; especially one just as strong as he, someone who could probably snap him in half with a blink.
"You really love her, don't you?" when she finally spoke, he nearly jumped clear out of his skin.
"I do." it was the first time he'd ever admitted it to anyone other than himself. "She's important to me, Jackie. Really important. I can't just...
It galled him to admit it, but Uzmaki Naruto was in love. That was the crux of everything. The problem that refused to go away, could not-would not-be solved by simply admitting his feelings outright. He cared for Tali, cared for her truly, deeply, eternally. But he cared for Jack, too. He'd met her first and since coming to this strange universe-or was it the future-she'd been the rock he'd learned to lean on during that first, crucial year.
"So where does that leave us?"
Naruto looked away. She grabbed his chin and turned his face back to hers.
"Hello? Earth to dumbass!"
...I don't know. I care about you, too, ya know." Truly, he didn't know what else to say. And how could he? He loved her, too, in his own way. Just my luck, Naruto thought. He hadn't seen her in so many years, yet he wouldn't give her up for the world. Jack was violent, ill-mannered, swore like a sailor when she was pissed, and had a terrible penchant for destroying anything that got in her way. And yet, he wouldn't trade her for the world. She spoke to the darkest part of him in all those wicked ways he shouldn't want, but he did.
He wanted her.
Naruto wanted to run his fingers through her hair and hold her close. To feel her lips on his again. She could give him what Tali never could. Was it wrong of him to think such thing? Just thinking about it felt traitorous; as though he'd committed a mortal sin, the guilt gnawing at his very soul. That Jack clearly wanted him only made matters worse.
"So, basically, you want to have your cake and eat it." If looks could kill, there would be a hole in his head. "You care about this chick," her eyes shifted to Tali's prone form on the nearby cot, "But you want me because you can't do the nasty with her. God, I had no idea you were such an asshole."
"What?! No!" Naruto exclaimed, frantically waving his hands. "I didn't say that!"
"But you were thinking it." her expression didn't change.
"Chigau!"
"What did I tell you about speaking Japanese?!"
"Its your fault for stressing me out!" he cried. "Gah, why do you have to make this so complicated!"
"It isn't complicated!" she snapped back, temper flaring. "Just choose! Me, or her!"
"I CAN'T!"
"So fuck you, and thanks for asking."
A growl. "And? What do you have to say for yourself, then?"
"Eh?"
Her finger poked him in the chest. "I'm talking about leaving me in that pod. You never apologized for leaving me behind like that."
A sudden burst of courage surprised even him.
"I regret nothing!"
There was a terrible, awful silence after that.
"Oh? Looks like you've grown a spine since I saw you last."
"Please don't break it."
He hadn't felt such anxiety when he faced down hordes of geth, nor when he'd squared off against Benezia and purged her mind of Sovereign's influence. Even grappling with a malevolent presence, an entity as alien as to him as it was fathomless, didn't compare to his. Even Saren himself failed to instill such primal dread in him.
But just looking at Jack, he felt terror as he never had before. The way her dark hair, freed from its ponytail to loft in some unseen breeze shading her eyes, told him all he needed to know. Then she smiled.
"Alright. I'll just break something else."
Meep.
Despite not being in the wrong what-so-ever Uzumaki Naruto knew then, with utmost certainty...
...he was well and truly fucked.
"Any last words?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. I do have something to say in my defense." He stepped forward and to his surprise Jack retreated. The sudden lack of aggression baffled him but he didn't question it, even as her back greeted a wall and stood there, ramrod straight. "Something important."
Jack frowned, looking at him with half-lidded eyes. "And that is?" she shifted closer to him, daring to ghost her fingers across his chest.
Now, Naruto knew how Jack's mind worked. He'd had plenty of time to understand her back at Pragia when they were children. Jack was a creature of habit, there was very little one could do to catch her off guard if she was wary of someone. But Naruto wasn't your average everybody; even as she glowered at him, his mind vomited a plan. It was a desperate one, a strategy that involved a great deal of risk rather than reward, but this plan was the only one in which he emerged with his hide intact...and maybe a few scars. It also made him feel like absolute scum.
'Gah, Tali's gonna kill me for this...
"W-What're you doing?" Jack's eyes flitted to his, to his lips, back again. Her mouth parted slightly, and rational thought abandoned him. "C'mon, what the hell is this?" She lifted her head to his as he leaned forward, an almost sensual look flitting across her face. The last brick in his wall of resistance crumbled away to dust.
"Running with it."
In a sudden, savage move, Naruto grabbed Jack by the face and kissed her with everything he had. All the suppressed emotion he'd worked so hard to tamp down over the last three hours came unleashed in an instant of inattention, hands pushing flush againsts her, grabbing, squeezing. His fellow biotic didn't resist his in the slightest; quite the opposite. She came alive in his arms, gasping when his tongue found hers, hands tangling in his hair as he bent her backwards over Chakwas's table like a basin.
"Mhmmmm." Jack's moan made his knees weak with want and need. "There we go." Her hand shot out, clearing the desk in a single sweep. Legs locked around him in a vice his hands coming to rest under her rear. She wasn't wearing any underwear beneath the thin fabric of her pants. Oh dear lord...
And in that glorious moment of hesitation-of distraction-Naruto pulled something off of his belt.
"YOINK!"
In a flash of red light, the blond vanished.
"Ah!" The flash-bang grenade went off at Jack's feet a moment later, turning her world white. "Why you little...?!" Jack snarled as a harsh bang resounded in her ears, swearing now as she scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hands. Once. Twice. Three times. By the time her eyesight had cleared Naruto was long gone. At first she didn't understand where he'd gotten off to-how he'd managed to escape the sealed medical bay and get away in less than thirty seconds...
...until she heard a muted thump in the vents overhead. She snatched up her shotgun and blasted the door open.
"GET BACK HERE YOU COWARD!"
Needless to say, all hell broke loose.
The pain was gone.
What had once been a raging fire in Tali's veins was now little more than a dying ember, still burning, but quietly. Her body lay utterly still, refusing to trust the sudden lack of pain; afraid to accept that perhaps, the last of her ordeal was truly over. Even then, full motor control didn't immediately return to her. Nerves numbed by pain and fever refused to respond. At first, it took all her effort just to twitch a finger, just to breathe. She was conscious and yet not, hearing voices, seeing things that weren't truly there.
Dimly she became aware of a return to reality, of new voices rising over the imagined ones. Naruto? And someone else, someone she didn't recognize. Her world swam again, and when next she woke, all had gone quiet again. She was left alone with her thoughts, and a traitorous body that refused to obey her. How long? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?
Tali knew not how long she had laid there, groaning her in her own fever sweat. How long it took for her to regain control of herself. But finally, finally she was able to move a hand. Then a foot. Leg. Sensation crept into her again, her body full of pins and needles from being still for so long.
Eventually, she was able to move.
That proved most unwise.
Weakened by hours of inactivity her legs crumpled the moment they touched down on the deck, sending her sprawling.
Loosened by the strain, her mask came tumbling off.
"Gah!"
Tali reflexively inhaled, braced herself for the pain, for her suit to clamp down and fill her with antibiotics...
...but nothing.
Nothing happened.
Her lungs inhaled the crisp, clean air of the Normandy, and remained unaffected. Her skin didn't have a reaction.
An eerie reflection stared back at her from her visor. And her eyes...
She froze.
First came horror, the emotion mixing into confusion, surprise, as she continued to breath air without a filter, without any sort of consequences. How? So many questions? Not enough answers. Was this a dream? Ow! A sharp pinch to her arm said otherwise. She wanted to cry, scream, weep, and laugh all at once. More emotions came, wiping out the horror, her soul swelling with something she hadn't dared to feel.
Disbelief.
Elation.
"Oh, Keelah...
(Meanwhile...)
"I really don't understand the point of this game, Commander. You move the pieces and...
...you really don't understand the concept of strategy, do you?" she laughed, watching contentedly as he unwittingly maneuvered his forces into her trap.
"I'm the best damn shot in the galaxy. I think I know a thing or two about strategy."
"Second best, Vakarian." Shepard shot back, bright eyes twinkling. "I seem to recall a certain blond beating you the other day."
"Nonsense."
Commander Isabelle Shepard said nothing to that, she merely moved the next piece on the board. Smugly, she waited for him to make the next move. Alright, he'd do it properly this time. She wouldn't trip him up with that smirk of hers, no sir! He remained determined to best her this time. What was the human saying? Third time was the charm? Something like that. Frowning, Garrus moved his own, black piece and-
"Checkmate!" the woman crowed, promptly, knocking it over.
The former C-sec officer growled.
"Commander, I really don't see the point of playing chess."
"I told you, just call me Isabelle. And I'd say its more losing than playing...
"FLEE! Flee for your liiiiives!"
Garrus squawked in surprise as Naruto bounded out of the vents above him, all but bolting past him. The distinctive crack of a shotgun echoed somewhere in the distance, followed by a feminine cackle. Garrus felt all of his hackles rise at the evil laugh. It seemed Jack was hunting, after all.
"Okay...what?"
Shepard shrugged, paying no attention to the ruckus, rearranged the pieces on the board, and beckoned for him to continue.
"Your move, Vakarian."
"Naruto?"
"Have mercy!" The hounded blond spun around so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash all over again. "Not the face! I need the face!" Jack had chased him halfway across the ship before he'd finally lost her in the maze of vents. Now, he cowered at the sound of her voice in the cargo hold, instinctively shielding his face from harm. When no harm was immediately forthcoming, he dared to open an eye.
Tali?
Naruto's jaw clicked open.
"Oh. Crap. Look I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Words rushed out of him in a rush, the damn breaking. "I need to tell you, I-
"Naruto." a three-fingered hand rose, intercepting him. "It's alright. I forgive you."
A blink. "Erm...you do?"
"Yes." her helmeted head bobbed once in affirmation. "And I want to show you something."
In the next instant, she reached for her mask.
"Don't-
The warning died on his lips as Tali released the seals on her helmet, pulling back the veil that covered her head. He watched, dumbstruck, numb, as she painstakingly removed every layer that separated her face from him, deliberately destroying the lone barrier that'd stood between them all this time.
"Its alright." she soothed. "I'll be fine; I'll even explain it to you later."
Dread gripped his heart, throttling him.
"No you won't! Put that back on right now! Before you...you...you...
"I want you to see me," when she spoke, her voice lacked the distinctive warble of her audio filter, now unplugged. "I NEED you to see me without this...this... thing in the way." She sounded small and afraid, and oh so very sad.
As he looked on, her three-fingered hands reached around, hooked inside the helmet, and pulled. It came free with a soft hiss of pressurized air, the violet glass that always hid her face now falling away to clank numbly on the floor. Her helmet followed suit seconds later.
Dark hair tumbled down around her face, and, there she was. His heart broke, came back together, shattered all over again. It was like meeting her again for the first time-falling in love!-all over again. Pale eyes shone out at him, her mouth curled in a small, shy, tentative smile.
"Well," she spoke, her voice a breathy whisper. "What do you think?"
Only one word came to mind.
...beautiful."
(Some hours later...)
War was not beautiful.
It was savage and ugly and brutal, the kind of knock-you-down bloody brawl that no one wanted to brag about. It chewed you up and spit you back out at the slightest provocation. War was a cruel mistress who favored only chaos. She did not cater to fate, she did not believe in destiny, and she showed no mercy to those in her thrall. Anyone who thought otherwise was simply deluding themselves.
Such was the case for Saren.
Virmire was such a place.
Once again, he found himself fighting a fool; someone who did not-could not-understand what he was doing, why he was here.
Man and turian collided; and one lost an arm.
The over-jagged sound of metal rending metal keened out once, followed by a warbling cry of pain. They broke apart, came together, and broke apart again, trading blows and bullets until their weapons clicked empty; overheated and slagging from the rapid rate of fire.
Naruto tossed his shotgun aside started forward, slowly.
"You hurt her." his voice was a hiss, a physical edge. If a knife could speak, this would be what it sounded like. Bloody, beaten, and battered, he came on, the skies darkening overhead. "Tali, back then...Jackie...You hurt them...you tried to use them against me...
Like a slow-moving train building up steam; his advance started slow and began to accelerate. Craters appeared in the floor-one for each step-steel sundering beneath his striding boots. Saren's broken arm lay clutched in his hand, the artificial limb still spitting sparks as it was cast aside. The bright sun of Virmire lit his eyes an unholy red, his body swaying in the backlash of the Normandy's still departing engines, a puppet cut from its master's strings.
He didn't glance back as Ashely walked/stumbled up the ramp to safety. He didn't see the Normandy shrink into the distance. Didn't see anything at all, except the bastard before him.
Fangs flashed, those eerie red lights trailing around him, almost like a second skin.
...YOU HURT THEM!"
Saren physically shrank back at the sight, eyes agoggle as the blond stormed towards him.
"Sh-Shoot!" He barked at the geth behind him, drawing back. "SHOOT HIM!" The first of many fired then; pinged harmlessly off his shields, diffusing in a shower of old and cold sparks. The second he slapped aside with his geth arm, contemptuously catching the high speed projectile in hand.
The next slammed right through him, blowing a hole in his torso. Another shore off his human arm, suit and all. He did not slow. All the while the incessant thrum of the bomb grew steadily louder in their ears. Naruto kept coming. The fingers of his remaining hand, the geth hand, found Saren's throat and began to squeeze. Saren scrabbled for something on his belt, and he only squeezed harder.
"This. Ends. Now."
CRACK!
Something broke in the same instant that the grenade went off in his unshielded face.
Jack heard the explosion.
"The hell is he doing?"
He'd insisted on going ahead of the group; alone, no less, to prepare the bomb, leaving her to fight with strangers she didn't know, didn't understand. All for a mission that meant nothing to her whatsoever. Perhaps he was avoiding her, avoiding Tali, trying to avoid the explosion that would happen the moment the three of them were in the same room together.
Perhaps he was just being stupid.
Regardless, she couldn't help but cringe at the sight of that explosion in the distance.
She could only pray the idiot knew what he was doing.
Naruto had never fought so hard in all his life.
Shockwaves shook the facility as the two biotics collided, human and turian. Warp fields dented metals, singularities ripped the broken bodies of geth off the ground and crushed them into oblivion. The Phantom of the Terminus charged and Saren met him head on, their biotic advance stalling out as their arms locked together.
"We are alike, you and I." Saren hissed as they grappled with one another in the surf of Virmire, each vying for dominance. "We're both a union of synthetic and organic." He grunted as he felt his organic arm begin to break, the limb slowly crumpling beneath the hybrid's superior strength. "Don't you see boy?! We know what's coming!" the harsh bleat of the bomb Shepard had laid threatened to drown out what followed next. "You know they can't be stopped! Your sacrifice is meaningless! Your defiance only guarantees our extinction!"
With a mighty heave he flung the blond away, hurling him into a nearby bulkhead. Breath burst from the blond's lungs.
"Join us." he said. "Or die."
Blue eyes flashed red.
"Never."
In an impossible movement he flowed around the former Spectre, his body seeming to bend around the bullet even as it leapt from the turian's handgun. Then he was gone.
The next thing Saren knew, the next thing he could comprehend, something struck his abdomen with more force than he could ever hope to conceive-beneath the single, explosive punch, the turian's defense shattered, his skin tore, his blood boiled and evaporated-and the base of his spine liquefied. He remained still for a few seconds as his confidence melted away, twitching spasmodically. Then he pitched forwards with a wet gurgle, vomiting blood and collapsing in a boneless heap. A blow of that calibre would've ended a lesser warrior. Not him.
Instead he was forced to lay there as Naruto walked over to him. Idly, he glanced down at his hand.
There was no blood.
"I'm nothing like you."
A dull thum of a sound was his answer. In the distance, only a few miles away, he saw the base detonate. Blue eyes bulged.
"Ah, balls."
His biotics flared, a crimson dome encompassing him as death roared towards them. He prayed it would be enough.
And then nuclear fire consumed him.
Pain grabbed him in a vice and hurled him into oblivion, his shield splintering as a wave of blinding agony washed over him. Blue eyes burst, sclera staining itself scarlet as the radiation smashed his body down, but still, despite the cracks in its surface, the shield held. Armor cracked and shattered, his robotic arm twitching spasmodically as it short circuited beneath the fires of the explosion. He could feel his face peeling, burning, all of his world shrinking to a single pinprick of existence.
Tali.
Jack.
Somehow, someway, he held on.
Somehow, he survived.
It was over in an instant.
Naruto coughed, blowing a smoke ring, squinting into the haze. A toe nudged the remnants of Saren's smoldering body. Of the facility there was nothing but a charred crater; black smoke crackling with nuclear flame; a scene of pure destruction and desolation. Was it over? Just to be safe, he stomped the turian's face in.
Mercifully, it remained still.
"Well, that hurt."
Abruptly, as though mocking those very words, the corpse twitched.
Scarlet light washed over the dead turian, withered lungs shrieking an unholy note of agony. The dead body screamed. Before his very eyes the modified turian became something else altogether, its limbs lengthening, the remnants of its jaw an ugly amalgamation of fangs and sharpened canines. And then, j
The beast looked at him.
"I! AM! SOVEREIGN!"
"Oh, that is not fucking fair!"
A/N: YES, I went there with that last line. Aaand there we go! I know it took terribly long to update this, but I've been dealing with work and a nasty bout of depression lately. Seriously, I never thought one job could beat a man down so much, but apparently I was wrong! Honestly, if I didn't have this site, if I couldn't WRITE, I'm fairly certain I would've gone crazy by now. Speaking of cruel craziness, I'm sure you're all looking forward to the insanity that's about to follow with Naruto, Tali, and Jack.
Needless to say, I'm about to up the ante in that regard.
So...in the Immortal Words of Atlas...
...Review, Would Ya Kindly? And of course, enjoy the preview!
(Preview!)
Aria smiled.
"You look quite pleased with yourself."
Naruto shrugged her praise off with a smile, the neon pulses of Afterlife lending his whiskered face an almost ethereal glow.
"Eh, you know how it is. You save one world, you've saved them all."
"On that note, I found something that might interest you." when all she got was a baffled look, the asari waved him forward, presenting a datapad in her hand to the baffled blond. "One of my scouts happened upon an undiscovered world at the edge of the Perseus Veil. Given what you've told me about your past, I thought you might want to see it for yourself."
Frowning, the Phantom snatched it out of her hands.
"What are you ta-EH?!"
Blue eyes bulged as he beheld the image.
Reality stared him in the face and laughed; he was looking at five stone faces, beaten, battered and scarred by war, but still the Stone Faces...
...of Konoha.
He was looking at home.
What does this mean for Naruto?! Stay tuned to find out!
R&R!=D