Chapter 9- New Hands have Touched the Beacon

POV- Kana "Shepard" Uzumaki

She wakes up feeling groggy and sore. She looks up and notices she is in the Medical Bay of the Normandy, and others are still asleep. She says," , what happened ?"

She begins to sit up and rushes over to help lift her." Well, Commander, you and a few others touched the Beacon, you know the one thing you weren't supposed to do."

She puts her arms under her armpit. "Heart rate is good. From my readings on the Prothean tech, it's touch and biotic-based, similar to how Asari can "meld." Thankfully, it didn't detonate like the stories we have heard of other Beacons."

She walks over to a nearby desk and pulls out a tablet," Yours and the others' Brainwaves were all over the place while you were unconscious? What happened there? Do you remember anything?"

Kana attempts to stand up, "A Series of visions, death and destruction, and I think a language being spoken I don't know."

Dr. Chakwas helps her to her feet, " It was kind of a blur, I think it was trying to implant knowledge, it reminded me of the simulation modules they use for training in the N7 program."

She moves her to a nearby exam table," Well, that's certainly interesting, well, you'll be sore for a day or two. You were seizing in your dreams, so I had to restrain you."

At that time, Naruto, in the bed next to her, begins to wake up. Kana rushes to his side, " Hey, you're awake now. Are you feeling alright?"

They both lean into the embrace, Naruto says," Now that I see your goofy face, I'm feeling fine. I have a history of having massive amounts of information downloaded into my mind. Also, Anderson and Nihlus, you can both wake up and stop faking it to be nice. "

They both open their eyes and smile. Nihlus says, " Well, we've been caught, Captain."

Captain Anderson, shifting his shoulders by rolling them," It's time we get to work, I imagine the Council and the Admirals are in a state?"

At this point, Lt. Ryder walks in," Indeed, we are still in orbit of Eden Prime. The General insisted that Normandy be held in the shadow of Einstein until her command staff was awake. "

Naruto, moving into work mode, says, " So how about we share what we all saw, maybe we can piece things together."

Kana begins, " Sure mine was a surge of images and experiences of massive destruction, meat to the grinder, and circuitry."

Naruto says, " I saw a shadow being talking to me in a language I couldn't speak, seemed pretty urgent about something."

Anderson, " I saw ships like ours but distinctly different fighting in a naval battle against an enemy that the vision wouldn't show, but it flashed between several battles against this enemy."

Nihlus, " I saw something similar but groundside, massive ground engagements of armies, but no visual of what they were fighting. Seems like the visions were incomplete, to be frank. The close-up of the fighting I did see was brutal."

Dr. Chakwas says while typing," Interesting, well, I have recorded your responses and we can review them later."

Naruto, " So, Sara, what's the council's response to this whole debacle?"

Sara responds with a soft smile, " They haven't been told yet, the Admiral of the Turians and the General decided we would wait until you woke up and you could report on what happened. Get all our ducks in a row and all that. So when we get to the inevitable debrief, we know what to say."

Anderson says as he stands up, " Alright, well, I'll get those reports to the bosses, and we'll make a decision. Naruto and Kana, get caught up with your teams and take the day. I'll get us resupplied and do all the admin, and after that, it will be Kana's and Nihlus's ballgame. So I can take my break then."

One Day Later- POV-Naruto

Naruto, in his cleaned-up uniform, , Kana, , Nihlus, and Captain Anderson were sitting in the debrief/ meeting room of the Normandy. The ship had just begun the trip to the Relay to fly to Luna to drop off the now secured Beacon. Kana begins by asking, " So what's the decision, are we reporting everything, keeping some back, going full cover-up, what's the plan?"

Captain Anderson straightens up in his chair, " We will be reporting everything in detail. Along with that, we will be heading to the Citadel after our dropoff to do a personal debrief with the Council. Your reports and my own, along with the ones from the higher-ups up will be on their desk this morning. We expect them to request the meeting, so we are preparing for it. This is more likely with the evidence we have that one of their Spectres may be involved with the invasion of Eden Prime. Final evidence account from our troops on the ground is that they were approached by a gray colored Turian with cybernetic parts who claimed to be a Spectre, and once they were going to check the facts on that the squad was killed by the Geth, their initial report did go through and we have grainy camera footage from the docks and a partial match via the shoulder cameras on our soldiers that were recovered. Those recordings were mostly wiped, but we did recover some. That soldier was then shot in the back of the head, as we can see from his lifesigns, his helmet reported an impact and then death. His body corroborated that. The geth then simulated the Sergeant in charge and reported they were moving away. They then dumped the bodies, which is why you didn't find them when you arrived at the Station. This is all to say, the Council will one hundred percent try to cover this up if it is the Spectre, I think it is. So be ready to begin an investigation on the Citadel after the initial debriefing. I wanted to ready you for that so we don't get you in a caught on camera moment of you accusing the Council of something that they are doing, but will make the Alliance look bad."

Nihlus adds," I deal with the Councilors on a more than regular basis and know Saren and his relationship with them. Over the years, he has done hundreds of Wet-Work missions for each of them and their Governments. he has allies in all of them that will go to bat for him, along with the Counselors themselves, so we are going to need some solid evidence before we go accusing their favorite lap dog of treason. He, at one point, was my mentor. I have seen his slow transition from a slightly racist but stoic man who fought a hard war for the wrong reasons to a megalomaniac. That is why I will be reaching out to my network and getting the ball rolling to cut him off, we do run in similar circles after all. Honestly, I would recommend we give the bare bones report that he was seen involved in some way, let them deny and cover it up, do our investigation and nail his ass with a clean sweep instead of the long drawn out game I know he will try to play. He likes to play with his food, so be prepared for hits from Mercs, bombings, and threats on family and friends."

Naruto, " Well, we're orphans, so good there, our friends are on this ship, so less threat there. "

Kana looks over to Anderson, concerned, " So we have the bomb sniffers check the ship daily, have our gear on while on the Citadel, and have troops confined to quarters while there?"

Anderson replies, seeing the unasked question," Good call, I will also send those concerns up the ladder to both General and Admiral Uzumaki, since I know them the best, get the ball rolling on the Alliance end."

Kana sighs in relief, " So tell me more about this Saren guy."

Anderson sighs, but from frustration, " A known Turian supremacist, and heavily anti-human Spectre. He has on several occasions been known to both me and ONI to have caused mass casualties for human life when not needed or even arguable. He fought in the war against us back in the day and was there during Shanxi; his brother and he were in one of the units on the front. There was some kind of back-and-forth thing that happened with resistance groups in Shanxi that ended with an orbital bombardment on Palaven. That radicalized Saren back then, but he seems to have gotten much worse these days. He has links to at least three high-level attempted and successful assassinations on Earth by Mercenaries. I, during a different time in my life, saw him blow up an Element Zero refinery with people still inside because he could."

Naruto says, " Alright, sir, I think that's everything. Go on and get some sleep, you've been up for 20 hours getting everything done, and Kana can run things while you recover. We'll handle the hand-off on Luna and get us underway to the Citadel."

One Day Later-Normandy Bridge- Citadel System

The Normandy pulls into the dock given to it by the traffic control office, the main group departs the ship via the side hatch, it now including Gunnery Sergeant Williams. They are escorted by an Alliance squad of Marines to the Embassy to meet with the Ambassador named Udina. They close the door behind them as they enter the large office that was assigned to the Ambassador.

Udina begins with a sigh, " Well, Eden Prime was a disaster for us. Thankfully, the Beacon was not destroyed, or else it would've been much worse. The Council wishes for a debriefing in person and to go over the Spectre business."

Kana, " Why in-person? This could have been done via a hologram call. This sounds like it will be more political grandstanding versus an actual meeting. I can guess there will be press there, and this will be public?"

Udina crossing his arms, " Partially, this will be a legitimate debriefing; the Saren stuff will be fit-inducing enough as it is. There is a legitimate chance there will be an attempted cover-up and sanction him off the record, maybe even have him killed. It depends on how they react to the evidence and the internal investigation I hear C-Sec has been conducting. Alright, let's get going. My team will clear the way."

They begin leaving the room, Naruto doing his best to hang near the back. He does a cross sign, and a clone appears. He hands his gauntlet to the clone," Hack him, leave a cloner in his system, and do some digging using his codes."

He jogs to catch up to the group, and they move to the Council building with an Alliance Marine escort. They, along with CSEC, cut a path through the onlookers and paparazzi that had heard something was going on. They march to the elevator across the Atrium and enter it.

POV- Naru Clone- Serious version

The Naruto clone attaches the gauntlet Prime had handed him, the VI inside says, " Ah, a Serious clone this time, let's get this done, then plug me into the slot and I'll begin feeding data to our servers."

The stone-faced clone replies softly, " Yes Ma'me"

He plugs the gauntlet into the computer on Udina's desk, and it begins flashing through lines of code. Haku says with a cheery demeanor, " Interesting, there's a secondary system in here. Alliance standard as an outer layer, and inside, a much higher-end machine is running in the background. This is a Cerberus setup, I recognize the code from when the boss was digging through that agent's device. Check his drawers for his passcode, I bet you he doesn't keep it remembered. "

The Clone opens all his drawers, in one a few drives filled with data that could be taken off-site, in another pens and condoms. The third was a bingo; inside of it were a few notes to Udina from himself stating all his passwords and the names of a few of his bank accounts. " Bingo scanning now."

That information was now in her database. Haku began crashing through databases that Udina had access to. She began, " So he has access to Cerberus's Slush fund of a Billion Credits, seemingly he's running it. They have holdings within Sirta Foundations, CDR Holdings, and Bulldog Ship Manufacturing. The goal here is to either buy out companies or shift them to Cerberus. Notes here talking about R&D and building a private fleet for the big boss."

Naru Clone says in an overly serious tone, "That's not good, them having access to that amount of firepower could be detrimental to our plans, and the clan's plans as well."

Haku, " Under this situation, I have looped in the Clan Heads, and they have a plan to install riders on all his purchases, which will, after going through, transfer them to the clan. There will be a directive to continue to inform him as our "agent," but he won't think to look any harder. The Prime, using his clones as a proxy, did set up Uzu Holdings so we can funnel everything there long term. I have also confirmed his allegiances to Cerberus; his personal finances point to him being one of their first patrons and major donors as they got set up, getting in on the ground floor as it were."

The Naru clone ties his hair up in a samurai ponytail, " So he's a devotee, must have a decent sway in the organization."

Haku responds, " Hey, plug in those drives. I want to see what's in them."

The clone does as she asks, and she begins data diving again." Oh, interesting, copying all this for sure. He has dirt on hundreds of politicians, CEO's, and Military big shots. This would explain why he never seems to get in trouble. Along with a bunch of equivalents in Asari, Turian, and Salarian space. I think Cerberus was using him to run influence operations against the other races. Alright, plug the second one in ."

Naru Clone does so, " Oh links to a bunch of Paramilitary groups and Mercenaries on call. Including their locations on various worlds. That's being forwarded to the bosses. Alright, let's finish up, plug in the third one, hurry, we don't have much time left."

The final drive goes in and Haku's hologram lights up, " Motherload, locations of black sites, military depots, research and development labs, even a few private prisons they are keeping. Most of these projects are grossly unethical. Oh no, message sent to one of the Admirals, apparently they wanted to test Thresher maws, so they arranged for a marine expeditionary force to land and do practice maneuvers near a nest. It is good we caught it in time, Kohoku has time to save his men."

She says after installing a bunch of programs on his computer, " Alright, I have looped the footage and opened a vent above, they'll be back in a moment. Drop me to him when no one's looking."

The vent hisses open, and the Clone chakra jumps up into the vent just as the door opens and Udina and the crew walk in. It closes behind him. Naruto Prime sees the vent close as they walk in a whistles a jaunty tune.

POV- Naruto

Kana yells as they enter the office after they met with the Council, " I cannot fucking believe that they are in full cover up mode, wouldnt even look at our evidence."

Anderson says with a sigh," I'm not surprised, Saren has been working for them doing all their dirty jobs for close to twenty years. He is one of the most senior agents and has worked under several Councilors. The Turian one at least tried since we said we had evidence, but the Asari Councilor didn't want to hear anything. The Salarian just watched everything play out."

Naruto, " Well, we will just have to do some digging ourselves. Hey, is that a military transport flying over the Presidium? Why is that there ?"

As everyone looks at the transport, a gauntlet drops out of the vent and a poof is heard. He catches it and attaches it to his wrist, and it hums with energy. Udina says with a confused voice, " That is weird, I will have to look into that. "

Anderson says, " How about this, report back tomorrow, we will have some leads for you by then, take the day, enjoy yourselves, maybe help around the station. I already have some feelers out, I imagine the Ambassador here does as well, and we can get back at it bright and early."

Naruto cuts Kana off before she can protest, " Yes, Sir, I think we all could use the day to come back in a better frame of mind."

She sighs and nods, they begin to file out, including Anderson. Naruto pulls him aside. He motions to the nearby bathroom. Anderson pulls out a device in his pocket and it begins emitting white noise. "So I assume this is an emergency of some kind if you're this hurried with it."

Naruto sighs and takes a deep breath, " Udina is the most corrupt and despicable man I have ever met. I had a clone do a deep dive in his files. First out of the gate, he's one of, if not the original, patrons of Cerberus. He runs their slush fund, where they are attempting hostile takeovers for critical technologies, along with getting into ship manufacturing. He has a multiple-peta-byte drive with blackmail material of about a thousand politicians from both the alliance and other various governments. He has ties to most human supremacist Paramilitary groups, he founded a couple of them. He also has access to, I would guess, most of Cerberus's research division, and from what I could see, it's some of the most evil experiments ever done in some areas. One was going down later in the week, where they arranged for a platoon of Marines to be dropped off near a Thresher Maw nest just to see how much damage they could do. That one is being dealt with at least. We need to deal with some of this stuff. "

Anderson nods stiffly, " I have a couple of ideas, you know that Corsair program your father was working on ?"

Naruto nods his head, " Yeah, where Alliance Command has authorized independent Captains to do missions for the government on the side?"

Anderson, " I know a couple of them that served in the N7s. I can give them your contact information, and some of these problems could be dealt with."

Naruto, " I like that, keeps the Alliance from coming in direct conflict with Cerberus. Since that could only go wrong at this point. From just Udina's desk, we could see they had about a hundred fully crewed facilities across the Galaxy, and he just runs one of their slush funds."

Anderson, " I'll get my friends your information by the end of the day. If you hurry, you can have them hit a few of the higher priority places, get the ball rolling. Now I really am going to head out got some calls to make and some sleep I have missed the last week to catch up on."

Naruto salutes, " Yes, sir."

They both walk out to the entire group waiting for them. Anderson salutes them all and leaves quickly. Kana raises her eyebrow at that. Naruto says, " I made some discoveries through some friends on the station that just got back to me, some of its time sensitive, so I told the Captain, and he's gonna work on it back on the ship since he has a bit of time."

The group regathers, " So Nihlus, what's your plan?"

Nihlus says, " Hm, the plan is so far to reach out to some colleagues, see what I can dig up, and continue to observe Kana here. I am still here to observe her for the job."

Naruto laughs, " True well guys, the first thing we should do isssssssssss….. Get some food, I haven't had anything all day. I know of a great ramen restaurant around the docks run by an old friend, you'll love it. Haven't had Ichiraku in a couple of years."

Chapter End

Author's Note- Hey all, good to see ya, quick turnaround this time, go like a year between chapters, this time it's like a week or two. Well, I got inspired and I have some of all this pre-written, so I can just copy from my notebook. So how do we feel about this chapter? Some interesting changes, I think, to everything. Some expansions to what the beacon did, turns out Udina was a Cerberus hack the whole time. And oh, Whattt Ichiraku is on the Citadel crazy. How do we feel about skipping the initial talk to the Council and my changes there? I wasn't feeling too inspired to write a thousand-word section on how the Council is still going to cover for Saren until they cannot. I think Sparatus being a little more on-side might be interesting, though, so probably will do something there. Anyway, see y'all in the next chapter. Peace :3