A/N: Well, my own personal hate army is back. DoomMarine54 just won't leave me be these days.
Seriously, is this guy a problem for anyone else, or is it just me? He seems to delight in attacking me for nearly EVERY story I have. Enough, man! If you don't like my stories don't read! Why must you continue doing this?! But now that we're done exposing him...
...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! Sadly, no Uzumaki Crossover on this chapter, but he WILL be on point for the next chapter...I hope?
Naruto and Saren's fight finally concludes in this chapter! WARNING.
It gets bloody.
Sorry if its short, but, hey, I'm back! And the Nanobot argument is about to get blown right out of the water. Language warning!
"Can we just not?!"
~?
We All Fall Down
"I. Am. Never. Doing. That. Again."
Naruto stood slowly, all but scraping himself off of the ground. His shields sparked and spat, and he was fairly sure there was a radiation warning going off somewhere in the back of his head...but he was alive. Despite all the odds, despite having more than a few holes in him, despite missing a few fingers he was still-mostly-intact from his ordeal. Each breath was a small agony in-and-of itself, but the fact that he could breathe at all was a blessing, albeit a painful one.
"Oi, Normandy." He touched a hand to his headset. "You guys there?"
Bzzt!
All he received was static.
"Well...shit."
Plopping down onto the ruined deck, he opened his Omni-tool and swiftly began to administer it to his wounds
With luck, he'd survive.
Saren hadn't been so lucky.
The Phantom craned his head, warily regarding the scorched shell at his feet. Damn. Shot and nuked. What a way to go. He paused, glanced back at the still-smoldering shell of what had once been one of the galaxy's most feared Specters. It was difficult to reconcile this charred husk of a turian as the being that had given him so much trouble-even come close to killing him on multiple occasions-was no little more than a corpse, an empty husk of a body that would trouble no more. This was it.
He'd won.
Against all odds, all possibilities, against everyone and everything that'd ever stood in his way, he'd got the bastard. It only took a few dozen attacks and a nuke to kill him. Heh. That was almost funny, really! Unbidden, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. His body was all but falling apart at the seams, but he was standing. He, Naruto, was alive. He wasn't.
Right?
He took another glance.
Nudged Saren's corpse with his boot.
He half-expected it to leap up at him, but no...
...nothing.
Nothing at all.
It was more relieving than he could even begin to put into words. Just like that, the dark shadow that had been haunting his every waking moment...it was gone. He'd avenged Tali, but more than that, this bastard was gone. He'd never hurt
Slowly, ever so slowly, he dared a smile.
"Not so tough now, are you?!""
Abruptly, as though mocking those very words, the corpse twitched.
The youth swore.
"No. No, no, no, you have got to be-
"RAARGH!"
Scarlet light washed over the dead Turian, withered lungs shrieking an unholy note of agony. The dead body screamed. Naruto jerked back with a start, mobility hindered due to his wounds. As a result, the impending shockwave all but flattened him even as he tried to strike a killing blow. 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, just when he thought it couldn't get any worse...
...the beast looked at him.
"I! AM! SOVEREIGN!"
Naruto groaned.
"Oh, that is not fucking fair!" wincing, he forced himself upright, gasping softly as the hole in his stomach shrieked in protest. "Can't you just fucking die like a normal person?!"
"Phantom." like a shattered puppet severed from its master's strings, a mangled arm twitched in his direction, fingers like claws pointing towards him in condemnation. "You have become a nuisance. You will be eradicated. The cycle must continue."
"Did that thing just ta-
Apparently Saren's new body was something of a geth stalker; because no sooner had the blond sighted down at it than the lanky bugger flattened itself against the deck and leaped at him. Uncoiling like something of a giant spring, it nigh but hurtled past, shrieking senseless gibberish. An angry red trench opened in Naruto's shoulder and he spun tracking with Saren/Leaper, firing back with his synthetic arm. A jolt of agony shot down his spine not a moment later, painfully informing him that the husk had in fact flanked him, and he was sporting yet another bloody trench between his shoulders.
"Hold still!"
Too much leaping!
"You will be terminated!"
Saren's twisted corpse collided with another wall and sprang at him before he could react, driving him to the floor in a heap, crooked claws scrabbling at his ruinated armor. Jaws like razors snapped at him, howling with fury. Naruto roared right back and bucked with all his remaining might, flaring his biotics ,and throwing the demonic apparition away. Shit, shit, shit! Clamoring to his feet he spun and snatched his weapon back off what had once been console, snapping off a quartet of shots with his pistol. The husk all but ignored the weak bullets as though they were simple pellets.
Then it hurtled forwards.
Naruto narrowly dodged aside, somehow evading the creature's wild lunge in time to finally change weapons. His shotgun barked furiously, blowing a hole clean through the turian's upper torso. Saren just kept coming, tackling him down again, gurgling wetly, spitting blasts of fiery napalm. An explosion of fiery agony burst through his mouth when the blond failed to block one and a metallic tang of burning blood filled his nose. Naruto hissed and backpedaled, parrying furiously, lopping off one of the husk's arms. The husk roared and struck him across the face, sending his body tumbling to the water.
At full strength, he would've been able to hold his own.
Now?
Now his amp was burning a hole in the back of his brain, and he could feel the medigel beginning to wear off. Sheer willpower kept him standing still, for the time being. Beyond that...
...this was going most poorly.
"You think?"
Naruto bristled as the familiar baritone rumbled through his mind. 'The fuck are you waiting for, eh?! Help me!'
"Why should I? You said it yourself. You don't need me!"
'He's going to kills us! Everyone! Everything!'
"And?"
'Are you serious?!'
"You will be exterminated." the turian repeated in its rumbling baritone, staggering relentlessly forward at him. "You will die. The quarian will die. She, and all those you care for. Submit to the harvest, or die with them."
A clawed hand rose, ready to administer the final blow.
"All who resist will perish."
Naruto twitched where he lay.
"GODAMNIT YOU FUCKING FOX! GIVE ME YOUR POWER!"
"FINE! JUST KILL HIM, NARUTO! KILL HIM NOW!"
Blue eyes snapped to scarlet.
Crimson tethers of mass effect fields erupted from Naruto all at once, hurling Soveriegn away as though it were naught but a leaf caught in a hurricane. As the controlled husk scrambled to its feet, it found itself facing a red tempest. Broken bodies of geth and salarians alike were flung away like so much chaff, hurled into the sea.
All the while, Naruto screamed.
He screamed until he was hoarse, until their was no more air in his lungs, and
This went beyond anything he'd ever forced himself to attempt in his life; his body threatened to break, to shatter under the strain of the power flooding him. Yet, somehow, he endured. Every cell of his body was united in the singular act of annihilating the fool in front of him. So intense was pain that he felt his eyes branch with strain, veins pulsing furiously in his neck. A trickle of hot blood wormed its way down and out of his nose. His hair stood on end with a sharp "crack" body bristling against the enemy standing in his way. Threatening his precious people. This time, he didn't bother to resist the anger that came.
He welcomed it, and the change that came with it.
Chakra-sweet, beloved chakra-welled up inside him, scarlet snakes of energy crawling across his prone form. Raising him. Lifting him. Empowering him. Strength flooded his broken body all at once as the cloak took full shape around his savaged shoulders, the pistol clattering out of his grasp as clawed nails curled against bloody palms. Woodenly he stood, slitted red eyes boring into the still form of the leaper husk before him, a pair of twin, red chakra tails boiling out behind him. Whatever Saren had become, he didn't flinch at this transformation.
He simply lunged...
"YOU DON'T TALK SHIT ABOUT THE ONES I LOVE!"
...right into a clenched fist.
What followed was perhaps the most singular beat-down in the creature's short-lived life.
Hands like iron locked around the husk's head and slammed him down with ease, crushing implants and vertebrae alike. When the husk lashed out, Naruto bit its other arm off. Bit. If. Off. When Sovereign sought to bite him, the jinchuuriki ripped its jaw out. When it made to flee, he broke its legs. Then the true torment began. The young man raised his hands and seized him from either side. Then he began to pull. Pull him apart with a slow, single-minded determination that momentarily alarmed the Reaper controlling its minion.
Nevertheless, the mangled husk's head lifted, looking him in the eye.
"You have failed. We will find another-
Pain.
It flooded Sovereign's true body all at once without warning, bringing him up short in his mantra. Impossible. He was Sovereign. He did not feel pain. Pain was for lesser creatures. It made no sense. The boy should not be able to harm him. He was a galaxy away, controlling his pawn through sheer force of will. Yet the strange sensation persisted, tendrils of scarlet chakra surging through the link he'd formed with Saren's body, flowing along the open conduit back to its source with all the force of a raging storm. Warping it. Twisting it. Hurting it. Burning it.
Annihilating.
Pain.
Sovereign swiftly decided that it did not like this pain. Not at all. It was everywhere and EVERYTHING, clouding all thought, pervading all sense! It was wrong! WRONG! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Make it stop! It had to stop and stop now! Frantic, it tried to sever the link, only to find itself shut out. Something-someone!-held it open, pouring years worth of raw, festering hate through him. Its thought processes began to fragment, powerless to communicate, to warn its brethren in dark space, even as the eldritch forces worked against it in the present.
"No."
Unlimited power!
"No!"
Unlimited energy!
"DOES NOT COMPUTE!"
The reaper thrashed wildly, caught in the throes of agony, to no avail. Unable to do anything but scream silently as its body came apart at the seams, disintegrating from within and without. It began at the legs, tethers of napalm sending its many limbs flying apart, crumbling away to nothingness in the darkness of space. Then came its body, all of Nazara's thoughts and words. Crumbling, in spite of its best efforts to shore itself up as best it could, it began to implode.
With this, Sovereign loosed one last, frightened cry.
"NononononononononononoNO-
Unaware of what he'd just done, of the invasion he'd inadvertently delayed, Naruto didn't stop.
Couldn't.
"DIE!"
Heedless of the victory he'd won, the kyuubified blond continued to wail on the shrieking corpse. Even when it finally fell silent, its master long dead, he still kept at it. Bits of machine and turian flew in every direction as he repeatedly slashed down with claws born of corrosive chakra, snarling and
Snarling, he cut down!
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
When he finally recovered enough to realize that he'd won, he couldn't feel his legs anymore. Or his arms. Or much of anything, really. Everything had gone...numb. Distantly, he was aware of the blood on his hands, on his back, pooling around him into the shallow water of the shore. A small laugh forced its way out of his throat, and he must've blacked out; because the next thing he knew, he was staring a painfully bright light. Where had that come from? Virmire's sun wasn't that bright. Was it?
"I hope you're happy, brat. Your body wasn't prepared for that much power; now you're going into cardiac arrest. Hang on. Going to try something."
Oh.
Waitaminute...
That was bad, wasn't it?
As the fox didn't answer, probably.
Now...when had he fallen onto his back?
And why did he detect the roar of a ship's engine?
Forcing his fading vision to sharpen, the battered blond tried to raise his head, and somehow succeeded, if only marginally. Someone was carrying him-Wrex?-but gently, far more than he'd ever expected from the old krogan. A slew of sounds assaulted his ears, but muffled, as though he were underwater. Remarkably, he recognized a few of them. He could hear Garrus cursing fluently, oh, and someone was gagging. Huh. Distantly he realized his mind was shutting down and he was going into shock-that'd explain his addled thoughts.
"Holy shit...we need a fucking medic!" Shepard was shouting, admonishing, and screaming all at once. "Chakwas! Someone get Chakwas, now!"
An unmasked face thrust itself into before his vision, moments later.
"Oh, Keelah." Ah! He knew that voice. "Naruto? Naruto, can you hear me?"
Naruto grinned blearily.
"Hey, Taliiii~! Did I win?"
She sobbed.
"Yes. Yes you did, you stupid bosh'tet...
"MOVE, damnit! Let me see!"
A crop of unruly brown hair faded in and out of sight, but those dark, burning eyes didn't.
"Don't you fucking die, you hear me?!" Wait, was she crying?" "I'll bring you back and kill you myself, you hear me?!"
The last ninja grinned.
"Sure thing, Jaaaaaaaa...
That was all he managed before he faded and sweet blackness took him.
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! THERE BE THREE!
(Preview(s)!)
Aria smiled.
"Quite the story, there. So? What happened next. Don't leave me in suspense."
Naruto's eyes lost their glazed look, becoming strangely sad. Almost...forlorn, even.
"We won." he said simply.
"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.
"You know," Naruto gasped, "I was hoping to keep this a secret. But you're not giving me much choice. Ach!" He gagged, hacking a bloody gob to the floor. "Tali always told me I watched too much Star Wars...
"Execute Protocol Orange."
Before the assassin's eyes, the blond's artificial arm folded down, fingers falling back.
Not a moment later a bar of orange light sprang into existence.
"Now, then." he snarled over the humming blade. "Let's see if your shitty sword can stand up to this."
VZZM!
The blade cut clean through the man's body.
Naruto turned his head.
Despite body still shimmering with heat from the explosion, despite his melted armor hanging in tatters around his shoulders, he was still intact. Jack still daren't approach. Tali was of a like mind. Something had happened just now, something to do with that sudden, apocalyptic burst of anger. The ruins of his home stood in silent witness, unmarked graves watching in quiet condemnation as the young man's back gave a violent heave, fighting down the urge to vomit.
But he was fine...right?
Almost.
Red eyes stared back at them.
"What?" he blinked.
"Erm...your eyes, dumbass."
The blond caught sight of his reflection and swore.
"Oh, shit."
What does this mean for Naruto?! Stay tuned to find out!
R&R!=D