Day 10:

-Streets of Konoha

Lyra's stomach tensed as she approached the Blue Nova compound. "Walk in, announce that I need to take a few commandoes with me on a mission and leave. Just like that. Quick as possible."

She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. "At least it'll be over fast. Either it'll work and I'll be on my way with a small group of commandoes, or I'll be found out and killed. Either way… it'll be fast."

She had rehearsed the plan endlessly in her head but she was still doubtful of its likelihood of success. "And here it is." She could tell she was being watched as she approached the door. Two cloaked figures appeared by her side the moment she entered the building.

"Matron we've been waiting for you. You've been gone a long time."

"Yes I know, I'll explain later. I have to form a group and leave quickly."

"The matriarch needs to talk to you. She says it's urgent."

"I'll talk to her later, I need to leave immediately."

The unknown asari looked at her nervously, "I really think you need to see her. It's not my place to say, but I believe it's an order."

"Shit. I don't think I can avoid seeing her; it'll raise too much suspicion. Of course… I also have no idea where the matriarch is."

"Walk with me to the matriarch, I need to ask a few questions." The asari looked surprised but did as she was told, walking with Lyra towards the matriarch's room.

"Have there been any recent developments?"

"Nothing significant. We've heard rumors that one of our commandos has gone missing, I'm not sure if it's true though."

"I'll look into that. Anything else?"

"Nothing of note."

After several tense minutes they arrived at a large black door.

"You may leave now." The asari gave her a funny look, then left. "I don't think they suspect anything but I clearly don't fit in."

Lyra knocked on the door, entering several seconds later.

An elderly asari stared back at her. There were no wrinkles on her face but Lyra could tell that she was ancient.

"Matriarch, I was told to come see you."

"Biara, it's been several days. We lost contact with you."

"After killing that root agent I immediately left to search for another root agent based on information I received from the first one."

"Another root agent?"

"Yes, I determined that there was a root agent spying on the organization and left to find and kill him."

"How did you get this information?"

"The female root agent I killed gave me information right before the end in hopes that I would spare her life. I determined that someone was spying on us, but more importantly, that they may be traveling with one of our own agents."

"One of our own agents… are you referring to Iria?"

"Yes."

"That must be the commando that went missing."

The matriarch was silent for several moments. "I already know about her, she defected about a week ago, or at least that's what we think. She was sent after an unknown ninja we caught scouting out the compound and she hasn't come back since. We sent a mercenary to assassinate her but it seems he failed."

"An assassin? You mean one of the commandoes?"

"No, a local ninja. We needed someone who would know the terrain."

"You trusted someone outside the Blue Novas?"

"He was a hired killer and so we gave him a contract. We didn't tell him anything about ourselves and he didn't ask."

"And how do you know he failed?"

"We implanted a chip in him… microscopic of course… nothing he would notice. And that chip has stopped moving for a prolonged amount of time."

"Do you think Iria and her "companion" are the ones who killed him?"

"I have no idea."

"Do we know for sure that she turned on us?"

"No we don't. She may have betrayed us, but there could be some other reason why she hasn't returned. It doesn't matter though, we can't take risks. A single traitor could compromise the entire operation."

"I returned to the compound to gather a squad and find Iria."

"I had another mission I wanted you to undertake but I suppose it can wait." She reached into a drawer and pulled out a small device, handing the tiny screen to Lyra. "This will lead you to the tracking device, it'll be up to you from there."

"I'll form the squad now, I plan to leave immediately."

"As I would expect." She paused, "But before you leave, did you manage to absorb parts of that human's genome?"

"Crap, I had hoped to avoid this question."

"Yes. In nine months I'll have a child with the abilities of the natives."

"Not really, but hopefully this will all be over long before they find out."

"Good. Now move out."

"Before I leave, which commandoes are currently unassigned? I've been gone for a few days so I'm not sure."

"Two members of Jenzia's squad are currently free, you can take them. Will two be enough?"

"Yes two will be fine."

Lyra walked out of the room, quickly walking towards a small crowd of asari.

"Have any of you seen Jenzia's squad? I need to speak with them immediately."

"Matron, we're right over here."

Lyra whipped her head around, making eye contact with two teal skinned asari. "Is that them? This is probably something Biara would know."

"Where's the rest of your squad?"

"This must be them, they responded when I asked about Jenzia's squad."

"Out on a mission, we're all that's here."

"Well this should be enough. I can't explain the mission right now but we have to move out quickly. Meet up back here in 15 minutes ready to move out."

The commandos saluted and left. Lyra sighed as they exited hearing distance. "Well this is going decently well."

-Naruto's apartment

Miranda approached Naruto's apartment, listening closely for any sounds of life. "Lights are out and I don't hear any movement, must still be asleep."

She considered bringing Sakura along to act as a mediator, but decided against it. "I'll just talk to him myself, no one else involved. I owe him that much."

Miranda reached out to knock on the door, her hand hitting air as the door suddenly swung open. She stared at Naruto the two of them silently making eye. The door shut in front of her.

"Can I come in? I want to talk."

"You had your chance to talk earlier."

"I know I screwed up, but I want to fix things."

There was no response.

"Can I please come in? I have a lot of things I need to tell you."

"Guess he's too pissed off to talk to me."

Miranda let out an exasperated sigh, turning around to walk away.

"Will you tell me the truth?"

She turned around to face Naruto. "Yes."

"All of it?"

"Yes."

He disappeared into the darkness of the apartment, leaving the door open for her. Miranda followed him inside, sitting down on his bed. It was dark in the apartment but she could clearly make out a somber expression on Naruto's face.

"So you want everything?"

"Yes."

"Do you trust me to tell you the truth? A lot of it is going to sound pretty far fetched but it's all truth. If you don't trust me then…"

Naruto cut her off, "I don't entirely trust you but just start anyways."

"Alright, just let me think for a few minutes."

When she finally spoke, she told him everything. The Illusive man, Cerebus and their plans for Naruto's home world, where she was from and why she needed to have sex with him. She also told him that she was no longer capable of carrying out her mission due to having fallen for him. Naruto was silent for several minutes after Miranda stopped talking.

"I don't really believe any of that, but I have a feeling that you're telling the truth. It would certainly explain your behavior and a lot of other things about that you wouldn't otherwise make sense." He walked over to the bed sitting down next to her. "Was the part about you falling for me also true?"

"Yes. I didn't want to believe it myself, but yes it's true."

"And the part about them destroying this planet after you leave?"

"I don't know if they're actually capable of doing that, but Cerebus may well be able to pull it off. A disease, nuclear weaponry, EMP… there are ways they could do it."

"And how do you plan to stop them?"

"I don't know. Bringing you back into space with me and refusing to let them have the child unless they spare this planet was my original idea, but it wasn't a very good one. They would take it anyways and then destroy the planet. I think the only possible way to save your world is to let the galactic community as a whole know about it. Then Cerebus would be prevented from destroying it by the various governments. Of course… that may well lead to your planet being colonized. To be honest I don't see any good way to deal with the situation."

Naruto was silent for a long time. "We could just run away, they wouldn't destroy the planet if you didn't return."

"It would slow them down for a bit, but they would send another agent eventually. The same mission would be carried out again. They'll eventually achieve their goals and destroy the planet afterwards."

"So what can we do?"

"Well… Cerebus has to be stopped. Like I said, we could tell the galactic community about this planet, that would probably lead to colonization but at least it would stop Cerebus from destroying it."

"That seems like it would end badly for the people of this planet."

"It most likely would, but it would be better than the alternative."

"Couldn't we try to destroy Cerebus?"

"Not realistically. They're spread out all across the galaxy and no one knows where the leader is." Miranda breathed deeply. "We still have a few days before I have to report back to the Illusive man, so we have some time to think about this." She leaned her head onto Naruto's shoulder, "And I promise I won't lie to you anymore."

His arms wrapped around her, pulling her into him. "I probably would have done the same thing in your situation."

Miranda closed her eyes, falling asleep in Naruto's arms.

-Woods outside Konoha

Lyra dashed through the forest, moving silently but quickly. Her fear pushed her onwards, driving her towards the thunder country, the place where she would most likely die. "Two commandoes who could find out that I'm an imposter at any moment and we're heading towards two people who are most likely more dangerous than the commandoes. I'm no statistician, but I'd put my chances of survival somewhere between low and very low." The group had been running in silence all morning, the commandoes were clearly afraid of speaking to Biara without being spoken to, while Lyra was afraid of giving herself away. "Half the reason for this mission is to learn about the Blue Novas. Guess I have to start sometime."

"We should arrive at our target just after nightfall."

"Are we going to approach in the dark, or wait until tomorrow?"

"It'll depend on the situation. I'd rather not get us ambushed."

"So… what exactly are we doing? You never told us."

"A commando has disappeared, possibly gone rogue. An assassin was sent to deal with the situation, and it looks like they dealt with him. And that's where our intel ends, we're finding his body then tracking her from there. She may or may not be dangerous, but we're approaching her assuming that she is."

"Are we going to kill her?"

"Possibly. And now I have a few questions for you. I've been away from the base for a while, what's happened while I've been gone?"

"We're not really sure, the higher ups don't tell us what's happening. Rumors spread but I'm not sure how true they are."

"Well what are the rumors?"

"Well, we know that Iria disappeared, that's not a rumor. There's also a chance that one of our contacts on this planet is attempting to betray us. The matriarch seems to be getting restless, she wants us to speed up the operation here. Although we still haven't been told exactly what we're doing here."

"Well this confirms that one of them went rogue. And the contact that's going to betray them… that's probably Danzo. There's no way they could know about his plans though, unless they inherently distrusted him from the start and assumed he would try to betray them."

"You said the matriarch wants to speed things up, how so?"

"Well, I'm not really sure… we aren't told things like that."

"Well there have been missions being carried out. You must have some idea based on those."

"Well… we know there have been several assassinations of ninjas in Konoha who have been deemed dangerous to our mission. We also know that the scouts have been going further and further out, scouting all of Konoha as well as the surrounding areas."

"Scouting just to defend yourself usually stays within a small range… massive scouting operations of the kind you describe makes it sound like they're preparing for some kind of offensive. But that can't be true… we don't have enough commandoes on this planet for any kind of large scale confrontation."

"If I tell you something… can I have your word that you won't tell the matriarch you heard it from me?"

"Yes."

"A few days ago I was outside the matriarch's room… and I heard voices. Non-asari voices."

"She had humans in her room?"

"No there was no one in her room. And the voices were turian not human."

"Consorting with turians doesn't sound like something she would do."

"They were definitely turian voices. I stay outside her room long, but I heard several mentions of the words "payment" and "services rendered". I have no idea what the context was though."

"The only kinds of services that turians provide are military ones. Which means she was talking to mercenaries. If she is impatient and wants this done faster… that would make sense. We currently don't have enough boots on the ground for any kind of military conflict, if we were to attempt to forcibly gain control of this planet… it would end badly fort us."

"A few thousand mercenaries would change that."

"You would need more than a few thousand… probably tens of thousands… and starships, bombers, troop transports, heavy artillery and whatever else."

"We very obviously have no way of paying for that."

"Not up front we don't… but if the matriarch offered them some portion of this planet and the people living in that portion… that might be sufficient payment."

They continued onwards in silence, on pace to reach the thunder country by nightfall.

-Thunder country

Zeke's eyes slowly opened, scanning around the cave. "It's peaceful in here. Maybe if we just hide here for a while things will blow over. Who am I kidding, no they won't." His gaze focused on Iria. Her arm was slung over his chest, her eyes looking back at him. She smiled.

"Sleeping beauty finally woke up."

"Glad to see you too." He tried to sit up but Iria's weight pinned him down to the ground.

"Just a few more minutes."

Zeke sighed, lying back down.

"So what would you be doing if you weren't here?"

Zeke looked at Iria quizzically, "Feeling curious are we?"

She closed her eyes, "Just trying to take my mind off the situation."

"Well… if I weren't here… I would be… probably entertaining myself. Drinking at a pub, flirting with women, gambling… something along those lines."

"Do you actually enjoy drinking and chasing women around all day long?"

"No not really."

"I didn't think so, you don't seem like the kind of shallow person that would enjoy that lifestyle."

"Using your biotics to read my mind?"

Iria laughed, "I have no such powers, only womanly intuition."

Zeke sighed, "I do all those things to take my mind off my missions. Spying, assassinating, manipulating government officials, betraying friends… I've carried out every sinister mission you can possibly imagine and a few you can't. So if it seems like I'm drinking, gambling and flirting as if my life depends on it… it's because it does. Well, not my life, but certainly my sanity."

"I assumed it was something like that. Believe it or not, my life hasn't been all that different from yours. I've committed some pretty terrible crimes in the name of the Blue Novas."

"What's your coping strategy?"

"Music."

"Music?"

"I play the eluya. It's similar to what humans call a piano but with 800 keys. The keys are controlled entirely with biotics, you don't move your body at all when you play. The music is deeply relaxing; it calms my nerves after missions."

"Sounds more productive than my coping method."

Zeke was silent for several minutes, wrapping his arm around Iria and pulling her closer. "You'll have to show me sometime if we survive all this."

"I'll be sure to."

"By the way, my wound opened earlier but isn't bleeding anymore. Did you..."

"Yes I fixed your leak."

"Thanks."

Iria was silent. Zeke closed his eyes, falling back to sleep.

-Downtown Konoha

Miranda trailed several feet behind Naruto, looking up at the birds overhead as they walked back to his apartment. He slowed down for a second, letting her catch up to him before turning to her.

"I'd thank you for paying for dinner, but I'm pretty sure you paid with money you took out of my piggy bank."

"Guilty as charged."

"O well. At least ramen is cheap."

Miranda went silent for a while, staring at the birds overhead as they walked in silence. She eventually turned to Naruto, gently nudging him on the shoulder.

"I've been thinking about our problem and I might have a solution."

"I really don't want to talk about it right now… can we deal with this tomorrow?"

"I don't think this can wait."

"Unless it involves us doing something tonight then it can probably wait."

She sighed, "Yeah I guess so."

They finished the walk in pleasant silence, both content to simply listen to the sounds around them as they returned to his apartment. As they approached the stairs Miranda wrapped her arms around Naruto, crouched down then hopped onto his back. "I'm too tired to walk up the stairs. Carry me."

"You're too heavy. You must've eaten too much ramen and gotten fat."

She didn't respond, instead smacking his sides with her legs, causing a startled Naruto to dash up the steps.

"See, less complaining and more running up the steps."

"I hate you."

"I think you love me and just don't want to admit."

"Shush."

He collapsed onto the bed, finally managing to dislodge her.

"So you really don't want to talk about how we're going to deal with Cerebus and everything else causing us problems?"

"My god will you drop it."

"Just suggesting we deal them instead of putting it off."

"We can put it off until tomorrow, nothing will change between now and then. Besides, my mind is too burned out to be of much use."

She smiled, rolling over onto Naruto "I guess I can agree to that."

The two of them fell asleep.

Naruto's eyes flew open. "What is this…? What's happening?" He slowly came to his senses. "Miranda's hands are in my pants."

"Hey there sleepy head. Thought I should wake you up."

"Some way to wake a guy up."

"I hope you aren't bothered by my methods."

"I most certainly am not."

She ripped off his shorts, wrestling with him as he removed hers. He opened his mouth to speak but it was too late, her mouth was already attached to his, intently sucking on his tongue. Her arms wrapped around his body, pulling him deeper into her.

"M, Miri…" He gave up talking as she ground her hips into him, speaking with his body instead. She shivered as his hands ran down her back, slowly making their way down her spine. He had his issues, plenty of them. But it didn't matter, she wanted him badly. She ground her pelvis into him harder as his hands groped her, sinking his fingers into her cheeks. She could feel him getting desperate as he sank his fingers deeper into her, squeezing so hard it was almost painful. A smile spread across her face as she felt him trying to flip her, trying to regain control.

"Not so fast."

She pushed him onto his back, pinning him under her. Her ferocious assault on the inside on his mouth paused briefly as his middle and ring finger slid into her anus, pushing deep as they could then moving in delightful circles. With his free hand he briefly lifted her mouth off of his.

"Miri I…."

She closed his lips with her fingers.

"I know exactly what you want."

Miranda stood up, gesturing for Naruto to sit on the edge of the bed. Without saying a word she sat on his lap, leaning her back into him. Naruto stared in silence as her hips raised off of him, positioning her butt over his shaft. She lowered onto him, sinking half his shaft into her butt before meeting resistance. Naruto groaned as she worked her hips in circles, slowly sliding the rest of the way down. His hands slid down her sides, wrapping his arms around her hips as he gripped her pelvis. He tried to speak again but was silenced as her lips embraced him, kissing him deeply as she worked her hips. The embrace continued for long minutes as she continued to move around in delightful motions. His grip on her hips became increasingly tighter as he came closer to the point, fidgeting with increasing urgency seconds before he burst. With a wicked smile on her face, Miranda stopped moving, sitting still with Naruto hilted inside her. She could feel him squirming under her, desperately trying to pump his hips up into her. Her weight pinned him down to the bed, preventing him from gaining the release he so desired. "Come on Miri…"

"Desert always tastes better if you have to wait for it…" She slowly rose up, sliding back down his length agonizingly slowly.

"You're terrible…" He gave up arguing as she continued to torture him, quickly rising up then sliding down over the course of 20 seconds, repeating over and over in a cycle that kept him rock hard but didn't allow release. The ordeal lasted nearly half an hour, eventually ending as Miranda dropped down for a final time, leaning back into Naruto and deeply embracing him. As their tongues entwined he erupted, releasing into her for 10 full seconds as their tongues continued their embrace. Naruto let out a deeply satisfied sigh as they broke off their embrace, Miranda leaning back into him.

"I told you its better if you wait."

-Thunder country

"Are we sure that's them in the cave?"

"The assassin's body is outside the cave and I can sense two life forms inside. It's definitely them."

"Are we attacking now?"

"No. We're exhausted from running all day long. Besides, I don't want to go charging into the dark if we don't have to. We'll stay awake in shifts, attack in the morning. If they emerge from the cave wake the rest of us immediately."