As she finished giving her evidence to the Council about Nihilus' death, Jane could already tell it was pointless. Though she had at least managed to turn the direction of the hearing back towards the death of the Spectre instead of just lambasting humanities perceived failures, using the analysis of his wounds to rule out both a Geth and human attacker, the Council were never going to condemn one of their top agents.

Saren seemed to know this as well, the slight apprehension he had shown when Jane had brought up the forensics melting away back to the arrogance and superiority complex he had demonstrated throughout the short hearing thus far.

"This farce proves nothing other than you let a Spectre die and still failed your mission objective which was to protect the beacon. Given the damage to it, I doubt we will be able to ever restore its functionality." Jane had to rely on every inner scrap of her professional decorum not to unleash a tirade at Saren and the council for their attitude, she was quite proud of her restraint until a familiar voice called out from behind her on the left.

"Ano, considering you kept telling us how you couldn't possibly have been at Eden Prime and that you had nothing to do with the mission Saren-san, you seem to know an awful lot of information about what happened there..." You could of heard a pin drop in the suddenly silent council chambers, Jane inwardly cheering for the boy's seemingly oblivious comment that threw the whole hearing back at Saren.

Naruto's words seemed to have caught everyone off guard, proof if any was needed that the boy was more astute than he let on most of the time, Saren's delay in response for those two or three seconds all the proof Jane needed that he was lying through his teeth with his next statement.

"When Nihilus died all of his files were transferred to me by the Council, including all the information about the mission that lead to his demise, I was not impressed by what I read. But then again, humans and those that they claim are from the time of the Protheans..." That was as far as Saren got before Udina cut him off, the Ambassador more livid than Jane imagined possible as he pointed an accusing finger at the Council.

"You gave all the documents related to a murder and attempted colony genocide to the person we have proof was involved in it?" Udina seemed to be about to continue when the room suddenly became several degrees colder and when Naruto next spoke his voice was lower almost as if he was growling, though each word could be heard with remarkable clarity.

"So not only do you give the person being accused of an act of war upon the Alliance all the information he needs to make any questioning useless, but you also inform him of a highest level secret that he then blurts out to an entire room of dignitaries like an genin trying to impress his playground friends?"

Jane hadn't thought of the implications of Saren getting hold of the mission documents the way Naruto had worded it and it was clear that no-one else in the room had either. Saren started to speak only for Naruto to speak over him in a manner that made it clear that he wasn't yet done.

"And not once do you stop him from being a bastard and talking about the Alliance like they are trash and deserved the Geth attack. It's almost as if you agree with what he is saying..." What had been a few quiet murmurs amongst the gathered crowd suddenly became a fervour not just from the humans there but also many of the minor Council races as they realised quite what Naruto was implying.

Jane was gobsmacked at the gall Naruto had, not only accusing Saren of the Geth attack but of the Council for effectively supporting it and providing him with information to defend himself of being accused of his involvement.

Despite the fact she felt she should step in and stop him before he got the Council to actually arrest him legally this time, Jane couldn't quite ignore the part of herself that was internally cheering as Naruto sent three of the most powerful people of the galaxy into a very uncomfortable position.

"You accuse this Council..." The Turian Councillor looked only a couple of seconds from ordering C-Sec to do just what Jane feared, talons gripping the handrail on his podium hard enough for the creaking to be heard from where Jane was stood.

Unlike the Turian however, the Asari and Salarian Councillors were a lot more astute of the mood of the room and with a only the smallest flick of her hand the Asari froze the Turian in place before he could do anymore damage than he already might have with his outburst.

Casting her eyes back to Naruto, Jane was surprised to see him glance at her at the same time, the young ninja seeming to question whether he should continue or not with his destruction of the galaxy's most revered political force. With a small sigh Jane gave a small shake of her head, something she knew the more aware people in the room would catch before Naruto spoke once more, his voice returning to normal as he smiled and reached up to scratch the top of his head.

"Accuse? I apologise most humbly Councillor-sama if that is what you took my words to be, I merely was pointing out a couple of areas that I felt needed to be fully explained to avoid any... confusion arising." The switch between cold hearted soldier and cheerful bemused boy happened so fast that Jane suspected most people thought Naruto had been switched with someone else or had a bi-polar disorder.

And despite his grin Naruto's eyes made it clear that the olive branch he was giving the Council at this stage was one that he was more than happy to take back at any time. Obviously he was hiding more than Jane thought, given how even she had been surprised by the ease at which the boy had outmaneuvered everyone in the room, though that was probably because nobody else would ever have the balls to accuse the leaders of the main 3 races of supporting attempted genocide.

The Salarian was the quickest to react, the frog like alien barely glancing at his colleagues before rapidly filling the awkward silence that followed Naruto's change in tactics.

"Very well, Uzumaki wasn't it, we will ignore your rather abrupt way of raising your points for now. But I ask that you make your tone a little more respectful towards this Council in future and not to address us in such a manner." Jane winced as she could see in her mind's eye Naruto's grin widening at the rebuke, but to her surprise he said nothing as the Salarian continued.

"In regards to your... questions, the process of transferring mission data between Spectres in the event of an Spectre's death is all automated as soon as a Spectre's death is confirmed. This allows for any pertinent and time-sensitive data that might be useful in following up the Spectre's death to be pursued as quickly as possible." That actually made sense to Jane and seemed to mollify the crowd a bit, the Asari taking over as she put on her best smile towards Naruto.

"How Saren got hold of the other information will be discussed outside of this hearing, as I can assure you the Council did not give out this information to anyone outside of us three. There is already an investigation going on regarding the two C-Sec officers and their illegal attempted arrest of you when you arrived at the Citadel, I am sure Saren will be more than happy to oblige in telling us how he gained that information to the investigating officers when the time comes..."

The Asari looked up pointedly at Saren at this, making it clear that no argument of any kind would be permitted at this stage. The change in tone towards Saren and the hearing in general was incredible, Jane almost laughing at the disgruntled look on the Spectre's face as he was chastised in front of everyone.

"But the matter remains that there is no concrete evidence that you can provide us with that would indicate that Saren was anywhere near Eden Prime let alone leading the Geth against the colony."

The pointed avoidance of Naruto's last accusation/question about Saren's anti-human attitude was obvious to Jane as the Asari tried to bring the hearing to a close as fast as possible, though given how much damage Naruto had done by speaking for less than a minute meant that Jane wasn't really surprised they were trying to avoid giving him any more air time.

"Therefore Ambassador, with no conclusive results from the C-Sec investigation either, your petition to have Spectre Saren barred from the Spectres is denied." The were more than a few angry shouts from the crowd at this, but Saren seemed to gain some of his former smugness back as he nodded thankfully to the Councillors before offering a mocking bow in Udina, Shepard and Anderson's direction.

"I am glad to see that justice has been served." Then the image wavered and disappeared, leaving Jane with a foul taste in her mouth as the Asari adjourned the meeting, C-Sec guards quickly vacating the crowds from the area before any more trouble arose. Udina was an interesting cross between frustrated and delighted as he quickly made his way over to Naruto and shook his hand rapidly.

"I have never seen the Council change their attitude so quickly, and you definitely had them on the defensive regarding the data transfer to Saren." Despite this Naruto did not look pleased in the slightest, his grin faded to a frown as he looked at the three rapidly conversing Councillors behind the sound barrier they had erected when they finished the meeting.

Seeing this and curious about his rapid change in attitude, Jane decided to ask a question that she knew might open a whole can of worms, but at least they would mostly be aimed at the Council rather than at her.

"Naruto, what is the matter? I know we didn't get Saren but we got somewhere right?" Naruto shook his head and nodded in the direction of the Salarian Councillor, eyes narrowing for a moment before nodding to himself.

"It's not that Jane-taichou, I think a little investigating of our own will help us there. I am more concerned that the...Salarian right? Yeah, he lied right to our faces about that file transfer, though I have no idea what the word automated means..."

To his credit Udina didn't even question Naruto's statement, obviously the boy had very much impressed him during the hearing itself, the Ambassador resisting the obvious urge to get back on the podium and start laying into the Council once more.

"But what do we do regarding finding any evidence regarding Saren? Check in with C-Sec? That Garrus seemed to have an axe to grind with Saren..." Jane's question seemed to bring Udina back to reality, the ambassador quickly going over all the flaws they had in the hearing, though he could have done it in a slightly less petulant manner.

5 minutes later Jane was heading back down the Presidium with her team of three in tow, several human's stopping them on the way to congratulate Naruto on 'taking it to those bigoted Councillors', Naruto looking distinctly uncomfortable with the positive attention that he was receiving.

He only cheered up when they made it to the lift and were once again on their own, both Ashley and Kaidan looking at him in slight awe as he leaned back against the wall with a sigh before giving a smirk and asking the question that was on Jane's own mind.

"So, whose heads are we going the smack together first Jane-taichou?"

Persona: Naruto Uzumaki

Naruto wouldn't say he was particularly happy with how things had turned out thus far, but given he had woken up seemingly tens of thousands of years later than planned and was now on a freaking space ship easily twice the size of the Land of Fire surrounded by aliens, he liked to think he was doing fairly well in the circumstances.

He hadn't managed to find any trace of the others on the planet he had woken up on, chakra sensing over a wide range being something he had picked up from Ero-Sennin during the resistance against the metal men that people called robots here. It didn't work on the robots as they didn't produce chakra, but it certainly kept him ahead of Orochimaru's troops.

His clones had spread far and wide in the time he had been on Eden Prime and given the negative response he had received from them Naruto had to conclude that he had been moved at some stage from his home, whether by the robots or some other race like these Protheans everyone had gone on about he didn't know. Summoning also hadn't worked, but if he had been asleep for as long as Nirali and the others claimed, the chances of there still being any toads left to summon were small to say the least.

Many of his friends would have questioned going with the strange people who had come to collect Jane after they reached the Beacon, after all he didn't know anything about these other humans other than the fact they were fighting against the machine men and the zombies. But it wasn't like he had anywhere else to go or another method of getting off planet, and given the rather dramatic increase in the search area he had for his friends now Naruto needed to at least get himself to somewhere he could start gathering proper information.

That didn't mean he was stupid enough to trust the other humans, after all one of the first things Iruka had taught him in the academy was that anyone not wearing a leaf headband should be considered a possible enemy at all times. Of course, Mizuki, Kabuto and Orochimaru had all proved since then that you couldn't even use the headband as a discerning form of friend/foe identification, but Naruto was doing his best not to think like that right now.

So he had taken to hiding in the shadowed places of the Normandy and allowing his clones to act for him, something he knew annoyed this Captain Anderson no end. There was no killing intent from the crew so Naruto wasn't too worried, especially when Jane had woken up and started talking to his clones like they were in fact meant to be on the ship, but you could never be too cautious.

That was why he instructed his clones to make himself out to be more dangerous and experienced than he seemed at first glance, 7 years of experience certainly sounded a lot better than the year and a half that he actually had as a genin, hopefully that would stop anyone trying to start something. Actually, now Naruto thought about it, other than Wave, he wasn't actually sure how much of his first 6 months counted as combat experience either.

But that wasn't important, the captain had seemed to believe him and there wasn't really any way they could really counter his claim, unless they actually did have one of his friends in which case all hell was going to break loose. Any misdirection was good misdirection, as one of the surviving Konoha ninja had told him after the initial attack, though his clone was probably overdoing it with that stupid 'honour-bound' comment.

He had tried to present the 'public' image that Konoha used when it was trying to win in civilian contracts for it's ninja, showing them as bodyguards and warriors who would protect their clients to the death rather than the no holds barred killers most became, but he wasn't a bloody samurai for Kami's sake.

He liked Jane, she had been interesting on Eden Prime and obviously not one to stand aside and let her subordinates do all the dangerous jobs. Not to mention the fact she had pushed him out of the way when his 'white samurai' had kicked in to manhandle Ashley out of range of the beacon.

So he had intended on trying to stay with her in any case, especially once he found out about this Spectre thing she was being assessed for, it sounded exactly what he needed to carry on searching for his friends around the galaxy. But the damage had been done now and he would have to keep up the honour-bound charade or it would cast suspicion on what else Naruto had told them.

Jane, Anderson and one of his clones had spent quite some time during their travel to the Citadel talking to someone called Ambassador Udina, who seemed to be one of the high up politicians in this Human Alliance and one of the people they were travelling to the Citadel to go and see. Naruto didn't like him, but then again Naruto had never really liked people whose arrogance was based on their position's power as opposed to any skill they actually had.

Despite the dim view he had to say the Ambassador had raised a few good points. Supposedly it had been agreed with the Council that Naruto would on paper be classed as an Alliance citizen, both to avoid any issues when he was boarding the Citadel and also to try and minimise any scrutiny he would receive from other parties due to his sudden appearance.

It hadn't worked, given the attempted abduction that occurred right after arriving at the giant space station, but Naruto wasn't really surprised, it had hardly been a half decent espionage attempt in his eyes. His clone, as the real him watched from a nearby alley way, had been a bit overzealous in dealing with his attacker, Naruto still preferred to avoid killing if he could avoid it, but given the dark memories being called 'subject' and 'thing' had brought to his mind it was understandable if not entirely reprehensible.

The fight, if it could really be called that, had delayed them for a couple of hours as an investigation by other officers of this 'C-Sec' division took place into why two of their officers had been gunned down in the middle of a crowded docking area. Naruto's clone had been interviewed by 3 separate people before finally a Turian entered and introduced himself as Executor Pallin. Given how quickly Naruto had been released under the man's orders, that probably meant he was very powerful in the C-Sec organisation.

Pallin had escorted him to his office where he had made it clear that he knew the truth about Naruto's origins, affirming Naruto's suspicions that he was in fact an important person on the Citadel and to the Council, and that if Naruto wanted to stay under the radar he would need to avoid utilising his rather... unique method of combat on the Citadel.

Pallin had told him any more bodies turning up with obvious stab wounds and without due authorisation would ensure that he would be seeing a lot more of the inside of a cell, regardless of any demands from the Council or others. The fact that he specified the bit about authorisation made Naruto grin internally even as his clone made a promise and left to head over to the embassy. Obviously there might be a chance to do some freelance work on the Citadel if things were that bad here that an Executor (whatever that was) was offering authorised vigilante work.

Upon returning to the human embassy Naruto had found Jane and the others getting prepped to go see the Council about the attack on Eden Prime with Udina rather snidely insisting that he "stop wasting everyone's time so that they could get going".

As he followed Jane and his clone as they exited the lift from the Council chambers from the obscurity of the crowds milling around the Presidium, Naruto was a little surprised by how easy it had been for his clone to mess with the esteemed Council's show trial. Naruto would be the first to admit that he was ill-suited towards many of the seedier parts that came with being a traditional ninja. But in a ninja village when everyone talked in half truths, insinuations and inferences you either learned to become a decently skilled verbal combatant or you became a sucker for everyone, and Naruto was no sucker.

Saren's attitude and general demeanour left so many holes for him to attack it must have been hard for the clone to keep himself at the 3 points he had used, a couple of henged agitators in the crowd doing the rest of the work for him. God he loved shadow clones. Once Udina and Anderson had given them their targets after the Council dismissed them he already had half a dozen of them flitting through the station. If anything about Saren did come up elsewhere on the station he would probably be the first one to hear it.

But he could worry about that later, Naruto was now keeping track of at least three people who were tracking Jane and the others with various degrees of subtlety. Now, Naruto couldn't just kill or knock them out, after the attention they had received earlier it was likely that at least one of the shadows was Council aligned and Naruto was already in their bad books. But whilst he couldn't tell who was reporting to whom and therefore who he could take out, that didn't mean that he couldn't cause them to become... delayed.

Five minutes, and two henged shadow clones later, two of the people who had been following Jane were being questioned by C-Sec over indecent assault charges and theft respectively. The Salarian and the Asari shadowers were completely blindsided by the claims of the two Nirali lookalikes he had created for the task. It wouldn't stick, or at least it probably wouldn't, but that wasn't important to Naruto as he perched above the walkway leading to Chora's Den.

What was important was the two Turians he had found armed and ready for combat, waiting for the arrival of someone. With Jane on the way, Naruto had a sinking feeling he knew exactly who was the pairs target. A small smirk came over his face as he thought about it for a moment, stowing the scroll with Kushina in it and shifting position so that he was directly above one of the two Turians, there was nothing better than a counter ambush to lighten a ninja's day...

A/N: So... Not a long A/N this time, just two questions and big shout out to PageOfMind for beta reading this for me, tis much appreciated.

First, I am probably going to switch Naruto back to the honorifics system when speaking to people and I am not going to have most translators translate it. Primarily because I think that it's a habit Naruto is not going to break easily having grown up with it all his life, and secondly because I don't want want to take another thing from Naruto that makes him who he is.

Secondly, what did people think of the trial? It bordered on a rather dark path that I hadn't considered until I started writing this, what if the Council had asked Saren to sabotage humanities interests on the sly and for the most part agreed with what he was saying up until he called the Geth in and started massacring people? It puts a whole different slant on the first Mass Effect and the rest of the series, essentially that Cerberus might actually have a leg to stand on...

Review please, I love the fact that so many people love this story enough to favourite/follow it, but I do like to hear from people what it is they like/dislike.