'Distract with clones, wait until it's focussing on them, rush it from behind and stab repeatedly until the thing stops beeping dattebayo!' As he cut down another one of Orochimaru's metal men with the chakra spear he had picked up from a battlefield almost 3 months ago, Naruto couldn't help but wonder what had gone so wrong to lead to the situation they were in now.

Where he had once been a proud member of a hundreds strong ninja force, he was now one of about 30 surviving ninja, hiding out in the caves the metal man had been getting close to through the now rather generic and war torn wasteland. The devastated landscape around him had been beautiful woodland in the heart of the Land of Fire a year ago, before Orochimaru's attack during the final of the Chuunin exams in his home village of Konoha.

According to the few survivors in the area around the Hokage tower where Orochimaru himself had appeared, after the initial attack by Orochimaru's Sound village and the traitorous Sand village who had until that point been Konoha's ally, the snake Sannin had trapped the Hokage in some kind of barrier jutsu that prevented any of the Konoha genin from trying to help their leader.

Naruto didn't understand all of it, he had been too busy following Kakashi-taichou's orders to try and subdue some of the Sand Genin who had been in the exam at the time, but Orochimaru had supposedly been one of the Hokage's former students before being cast out of the village for illegal and deadly human experiments. Supposedly the man held a grudge since then and had been plotting Konoha's downfall for years, though this was all based on what Jiraiya said about the traitorous missing nin, the man had been on the same genin team as him after all.

The rest of what happened became very difficult to understand, given the differing accounts and confusing melee that was occurring due to the invasion, but a few things were known as fact. Whether it was because he wasn't winning his little duel with the Hokage or that the invasion wasn't going according to plan Naruto didn't know, but suddenly Orochimaru had flared his chakra to massive levels that could be felt throughout the centre of Konoha, leaving some kind of summoned minions to keep the Sandaime busy. Shortly after he had done this, the skies began to darken and hell began to rain down.

Initially when meteors began to rain from the sky and slam into Konoha's buildings and streets it was assumed it was some kind of jutsu, though admittedly one on a massive scale, but that all changed when the first shinobi to investigate the landing sites were obliterated by beams of death. From within the meteors came men of metal, armed with deadly weapons that could spell death at hundreds of meters with the accuracy that most shinobi could not match.

The metal men were almost indiscriminate in their killing, Suna and Konoha ninja alike falling to their weapons. This was a turning point in the assault as the Suna Shinobi quickly called a truce with Konoha to deal with the metal men and their Sound ninja allies, who seemed to have expected the metal men's arrival and were quick to turn on their former allies. Luckily the Sound ninja were not well coordinated or trained and the metal men were ponderous and slow, meaning that despite their armament and numbers they were relatively easy to counteract and force back.

But Naruto only learned of this change in alliances after returning to the city with a defeated and badly injured Gaara and Temari, carrying Sakura over his shoulder despite his injuries, having been attacked by the same metal men after defeating Shukaku. That had truly been the end of his 'childhood', as he remembered back to the end of what had been the most difficult fight of his life.

*Flashback*

He had done it, defeating Gaara when even Sasuke-teme couldn't! Even with Temari stood in between the two of them Naruto knew the fight was over, despite her defiance her earlier defeat left her barely able to stand, Gaara not focussing on him at all now as the young redhead stared up in shock at his sister.

"Why protect me Temari?"

"Because you are my little brother, and I will always protect you even if you don't want me too." Whilst it was a touching scene of family reconciliation that Naruto could only wish would happen to him some day, he was distracted by the shout of one of his few remaining clones, who he had gotten to free Sakura when he had defeated Shukaku.

"Boss, above you!" Looking up Naruto saw what could only be a wave of meteors raining down towards them.

At first he thought it might have been a jutsu by one of the Sand genin, but given how close to him they were he thought it very unlikely as they would be caught in the attack as well. His clone's shout had alerted Gaara and Temari to the meteor as well, Temari quickly moving to help Gaara up, Naruto deciding to trust his instincts and help her.

They barely made it to the treeline, which encircled the devastated wasteland where he and Gaara had fought, when the meteors began to impact. The earth shook and dust filled the air, as the four of them crouched under a hasty sand barrier that Gaara was struggling to maintain, the red head shaking with exertion even as Temari whimpered next to him. Thirty seconds later and the impacts stopped, Naruto waiting a moment before looking out from underneath the shield.

"Whatever the hell that was dobe, I hope you weren't the one that did that..." Sasuke's voice focussed Naruto on the young Uchiha, who was standing near one of the craters just inside the treeline, multiple cuts and bruises showing the boy had been stood a little too close to the meteor impact site than was advisable.

Suddenly there was a popping sound, audible from where Naruto was standing, inside the crater. Sasuke turned to look into the crater even as a light humming filled the air, the Uchiha's body language turning to one of shock as a flash of light filled Naruto's vision...

*Flashback End*

Naruto didn't remember precisely what happened after that, only coming back to himself to Sakura's crying as shock set in, a pile of mangled metal man corpses scattered across the battlefield like leaves caught in a hurricane.

If that had been all of them, that might have been the end of things and life would have returned to something approaching normal. But even as the Konoha ninja mourned their dead and tried to regroup after the battle, the skyships descended, the smallest of which easily the size of a house. Luckily the initial attack of the metal men meant that when the surviving high ranking ninja saw the skyships descending and blackening the sky, they ordered an evacuation of Konoha rather than trying to stay and fight.

He and the other rookies had been lucky that day Naruto thought even as he jumped back into the shadows, they had been considered too injured/inexperienced to continue the fight during the evacuation, instead being sent ahead to clear an evacuation route for the civilians to follow. So when the initial bombardment had wiped the centre of Konoha from the map in but a few moments, all they could do was watch in abject horror as their entire life was wiped from existence.

Neji, Lee and Shino had been amongst the many who hadn't made it out of the massacre, the three of them having been being treated in the makeshift trauma centres when the attack had begun. In fact, Naruto thought bitterly as he shushined back to the cave entrance, it was easier to remember those that were still alive at this point rather than those that had perished, given that he could count those from Konoha in the group on two hands.

Waiting a moment at the entrance whilst the seals recognised his chakra, Naruto then stepped into the cave that would soon become their temporary tomb. Even as he saw the long mane of white hair that he instantly recognised, Naruto had to bite back the indignity he felt at Jiraiya's plan, his dark side and the Kyuubi screaming at him to take the fight to the metal men to make them pay for what they had done.

But the old sage had spoken the truth when he had argued against that kind of heroic final assault, the metal men's numbers seemed innumerable and even bringing down some of their sky ships had no effect on their tactics. So instead, Jiraiya wanted to use the shinobi tactic of deception.

The metal men seemed to be following their life signs and from what the few surviving Oto ninja had told them the metal men wouldn't stop until everyone of the planet was gone. So with that in mind, Jiraiya had offered their current plan instead, and given the statuesque forms of his comrades that now lay on the ground deep inside the cave itself, the old man was nearly done.

"Are you sure about this Ero-sennin? What if this doesn't work? Or what if you can't get back to us once the metal men leave?" These were all questions Naruto had asked before, in fact he had gone further several times when speaking to the toad sannin in private. What if the metal men didn't leave? What if Jiraiya died before he could come and awaken them again?

"As I have said before gaki, the sealing will work, I doubt that the metal men will do a visual sweep seeing as they have those scanner things. And we have tested this against those scanners remember, so we will be fine. And I have to be the one to do this, unlike you I can supress my chakra enough that when I go to the toads they won't be able to find me. Once they have gone I will return or send another survivor, given these bastards don't bleed I think blood will be a good enough trigger to break the seals. Now, quickly before another patrol comes this way..."

Jiraiya gestured to the plinth of stone, covered in seals that were an integral part of the plan to disguise Naruto's chakra and put him into stasis like the others. Unlike the others who had been put in stasis whilst lying down, making their forms look like they were sleeping, Naruto had insisted he stand up for his petrification as Jiraiya called it. As he took his place and Jiraiya began the handsigns to complete the sealing process, Naruto muttered the motto that he had picked up from Kakashi, who had gone down whilst on a rescue mission three months into the invasion.

"Better to die on your feet, protecting the innocent, than hiding like a worm in the trash..." The sensation of sleep quickly washed over him and Naruto adopted what he had decided would be his pose, stood feet shoulder width apart with the spear digging into the platform just off from his right foot. Lastly, his face was set in what he hoped was a defiant look as he stared at the cave entrance, before everything went black...

*LINE BREAK*

It was supposed to have been an easy assignment, that was the thought that went through Nirali Bhatia's as she continued to stagger away from her pursuers, her left hand trying to cover the heavy wound to her stomach. A nasty memento, gained from her first encounter with one of the zombies now chasing her.

Take a secondment on one of the newly colonised worlds, they paid corpsmen extra as there was a lack of skilled personnel willing to work so far out on the frontier, earn enough for an early retirement back to Earth with Samesh. A simple plan that she had felt was perfect, despite Samesh's worries about her being stationed on the edge of the Terminus and the threat of pirates and batarian slavers.

Given the Geth attack and what they had done to the poor colonists, whose corpses now pursued her, Nirali would take pirates any day. Up ahead was the strange statue of a boy armed with a spear, it had been there when she arrived three months ago and when she asked around, Nirali had found that the statue had actually been found in the initial Prothean ruins that had been excavated. This had garnered some interest, until they had excavated out the strange beacon artifact all the scientists had been going crazy over.

Even as she stumbled into it, the bloodloss played havoc with her balance, Nirali felt there should have been more interest in why the Protheans had a human statue. Especially when 50,000 years ago humans would not have been evolved enough for the clothes and weapons the statue had with it. But as she stumbled round the statue before falling to the ground, Nirali realised that wasn't going to be a question she got an answer to in this lifetime, drawing her pistol with her free hand as the sounds of the zombies came closer and closer.

"I'm sorry Samesh, so sorry..." Her whisper was almost drowned out by the approaching zombies, her focus on the approaching enemies meaning that she missed the small crack of the statue's outer shell breaking slightly where her bloody handprint rested...

A/N: So, a Naruto/Mass Effect crossover, I certainly cannot claim to be the first but I am hoping my version is original enough for it to gather your interest dear reader. Couple of key points that I think I need to clarify at this stage:

Firstly yes some of Naruto's comrades and friends were sealed when Naruto was sealed into stasis as well, but they will not feature in ME 1, you will find out more if I turn this into more than a 1 shot.

Secondly, Naruto will be powerful in this, he's faster, stronger and much more durable than a normal human, but he is not faster than bullets, a rocket will put him down for some time and he will not be taking out reapers by himself. His use of chakra and shadow clones will make him a great asset to Shepard's team but he will not be so powerful as to make the rest of the team useless.

Thirdly, this will be a harem story, FemShep and Tali are in but I am otherwise open to suggestions from the ME universe, though please give a reason beyond 'they would be cute together'. Remember this is Chuunin exams Naruto with a years guerilla warfare experience tagged on, so nothing about sage powers or anything like that when using them as reasons for a pairing.