This is my Naruto 40K crossover. I'll be publishing it here and on AO3/FF/QQ simultaneously, future chapters will arrive early for you guys, of course.
Chapter 1:
When the Sky Cracked
The desert wind howled over the dunes, brushing fine sand against the cliffs of Sunagakure. A thin crescent moon hung above like a crooked blade.
Far from the village walls, in the fields of small plateuas, two figures stood atop a jagged sandstone outcropping. Cloaked in black and red, their arrival had been silent and peaeful. Their purpose, anything but.
“The walking is finally over,” Deidara said, voice hushed beneath his long blond bangs.
"Was it really so bad of a journey?" asked Sasori.
"The return trip, flying, will be much more bearable," groused Deidera.
He retrieved his occular device and placed it over one eye, before surveying what they had to work with. The plan was to go in, hit fast and hard, grab the Ichibi, and fly out of there. Well, that was his ideal plan. There were plenty of backup options.
He began laying them out.
“Perimeter’s thin. I can blow a hole through their wall before they even know we're here.” he Suggested.
"Wholly unnecessary." dismissed Sasori. "I would suggest drawing the enemy out. I can draw out the peons, while you go in for the target."
"Oh, an old bull strategy vs my young bull strategy?" joked Deidera.
Even through it was not his true face, but a puppet body, Deidera could see confusion in his posture as his sensei glanced at him.
"You don't know the story of the old bull and the young bull?" asked Deidera incredulously.
He readied to tell the joke, when every hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he crouched low. Based on how Sasori crouched at the exact same time, he must have felt it too. Neither of them were even sensory types, so what the hell were they feeling.
"Is that Shukaku?" asked Deidera. "I'd heard that tailed beasts chakras are so potent and strange that even non-sensory types could feel it, but not form Jinchuuriki?"
He imagined more bloodlust and cruely. But he felt was more like a chaotic storm of glee and childlike brawling. Like an entire battlefield shouting directly into his soul.
"Not unless they unleash it, can you see a conspicuous giant demonic raccoon rising over the city?" asked Sasori.
Deidera turned his occular device and checked. The city looked fine. Nobody was panicking. There was no mass death or destruction. He did see shinobi on the ramparts looking around themselves in a panic, no doubt feeling the same sensation Deidera was.
"Shukaku is not unleashed." reported Deidera. "And I don't think it's coming from the village. It feels more like..."
Before he could say "above it" the source made itself visble.
The sky ignited, and far above Suna in the atmosphere a fireball descended upon the earth.
The streak of flames ripped across the heavens, trailing molten shards like bleeding stars. It streaked high over the village and flew far to the east towards the land of fire. It then did the strangest thing. It started to slow down, rather suddely, and curved northward. He'd never seen a comet or asteroid this big or close, but that struck Deidera as odd behavior for a cosmic object.
It vanished over the horizon and the world was silent. The world remained silent as a large plume of light, fire and earth flew kilometers in the air. The impact blazed with a flash so bright it turned the night into day. Despite the bright show, the silence all the way up until the shokwave, carrying with it great winds and sand, washed over them like a tsunami.
The ground buckled beneath their feet at the same time. Between the scalding hot winds,
A mushroom cloud of dust and fire climbed into the sky. From this distance, it looked like the heavens themselves had been pierced.
“…That’s new,” Deidara muttered, stunned into silence. Then his hand twitched. “Wait. Do you… feel that?”
Sasori, standing motionless in his ornate puppet body, didn’t answer immediately. But even he turned his head toward the distant crater.
“Mission’s ruined,” Sasori said flatly.
Below them, Sunagakure had burst to life. Torches ignited. Shadows flickered along the walls. Ninja scrambled into defensive lines like fire ants pouring from a kicked nest. He was right. As powerful as they were, the chance of success with every single person in Suna on high alert was severely diminished. He was arrogant enough to believe that they could still get the job done despite this article, but not to think they should.
Deidera sighed.
"Let the walking commence again," he bemoaned.
"No. Let the running begin. We need to report this to the entire Akatsuki post-haste." said Sasori.
"Our failure?" asked Deiders.
Sasori looked at him.
"The impact, and whatever it brought with it. Best case scenario this is some Hoshigakure star bullshit." reasoned Sasori.
Deidera noticed a strange hopefulness in his sensei's voice. Like he wanted that to be the case but had a worse case in mind.
He didn't dare ask.
Gaara stood upon the highest tower of Sunagakure’s central citadel, his gourd already slung over his shoulder. The red glow from the horizon painted his pale skin like war paint. Behind him, the village roared to life.
Seals ignited along rooftops. Messengers blinked out of existence in flashes of light. Falcons launched from aviaries with scrolls strapped to their legs. Wind-surfing scouts glided low across the sand dunes, their boards trailing wake like ships over water. It was not panic — it was war protocol.
“All field squads to forward staging positions,” Gaara ordered.
His voice didn’t rise, but it carried over the noise and the jonin around him obeyed like thunder to lightning.
The sand shifted unnaturally as he lifted into the air on a swirl of grains and dust. Beneath him, hundreds of Suna shinobi poured toward the desert’s edge, mobilizing faster than any civilian nation could dream. They had been born of the sand. The desert would not claim them easily.
The trip was short, and their heading clear. Not thirty minutes later they arrived at the edge of the crater.The landscape around it was vitrified, and still hot, glass for ten whole kilometers in every direction around the theing that impacted. He lacked the words to describe it.
It almost looked like a ship, say that it was an order of magnitude larger than Sunagakure. They could fit the entire population of the the great villages in it and do so comfortably. It was it's make that baffled him.
The sprawling, broken husk was of twisted metal thicker than the walls of Sunagakure. It was also wholly unsuited to the water, being all right angles and hard edges, no curves. It looked more like a giant cannon than ship. Entire towers jutted at impossible angles.
"Wind release users, cool the glass!" ordered Gaara.
They did so, stepping forward, and strong wins wafted heat away from the battlefield. What remained was hard, smooth, cold ground to walk on. And so they walked along in, weapons drawn and at the ready.
As they got close they saw new details.
Rotting, spore-covered fungal groths sprouted from gaps in the hull, gaps that hissed steam and smoke into the atmosphere. Green mist bled from broken hulls like the breath of some sick god. The air around it stank of corrosion and blood.
And it was alive.
Gaara looked up to the squads above, the elite scouts riding desert hawks who now circled the craft.
He signalled for them to go in for a closer look with his electric torch and they obliged.
They didn’t last long. There was a loud bang, followed by dozens more, and one scout vanished mid-flight in a spray of red mist, his hawk spiraling down aflame. Another exploded in midair, hit by something loud and impossible — a roar, a flash, a streak of crude metal from a weapon too primitive to work… but it did.
Then the screaming began.
Green-skinned monsters poured from the wreckage, each one the size of two men, howling in laughter and rage. They carried massive weapons that roared with sound and light. Some were armored in scrap-metal plate and leaking pipes. Others wore bones, chains, and fungal grafts.
It was all very familiar, and Gaara thought Temujin had returned with his army of artificial soldiers. But no, this wasn't them.
“They have firearms! All shinobi incapable of supersonic speeds Fall back!” barked Baki, leading the next wave from atop a glider, sand swirling beneath him.
Most of the chunin and all of the genin did as instructed, not yet able to pass the movement speed tests Jonin were required to pass. Some were reduced to fine mist as they fled. Some Jonin had already fallen to the weapons, not expecting high caliber firearms.
A few nearly hit Gaara, save that his defenses caught them in time. Or at least, deflected them. One grazed his cheek and were it not for the stronger sang covering his skin it would have drawn blood.
He raised both hands and forged a large wall of sand between the retreating shinobi and the bullets, he also doubled the sand barrier protecting him.
“Form anti-siege lines! Use the wind wall jutsu! Contain the enemy!” Gaara ordered.
But the monsters didn’t slow. They charged through kunai, through chakra-enhanced traps, through wind blades and fire storms — laughing the whole time, as if the act of being killed was just another punchline in a cosmic joke.
And then one spoke.
Not in a language. Not exactly. But in sound, in force, in belief.
“MORE HUMIES! MORE DAKKA!”
The initial shock had worn off and his soldiers were no longer flatfooted.
The chunin and genin who retreated to safe distance created a line of defense while the Jonin charge forth. They blurred from cover to cover, most only able to maintain such high speeds in short burts. Thankfully there was enough debris from the crash upturned outcropping to hide behind between bursts.
His men dodged the supersonic projectiles with preternatural grace by reacting to the sound and flicker of fire before the crude bullets ever arrived. But not all were so quick.
A young Chunin raised a sand shield too slowly and vanished into a red mist. Another tried to counter with a flame bullet, only to take a jagged hunk of metal through the shoulder — and then the chest — before he hit the ground. Blood soaked the dunes. Screams painted the wind.
Gaara focused his attention on grabbing and pulling away the injured, mostly Chunin whose skill was just below what they thought it was. They would be reprimanded terribly when they recovered, but for now they would be saved.
And the monsters only laughed as they were cut down.
Long-distance ninjutsu lit the battlefield. Firestorms roared through the gaps. Lightning cracked. Wind razors whistled like banshees across the lines. But the green things did not slow. Many burned. Many fell. None hesitated. Pain, to them, was like music.
The Suna lines buckled.
And then they reached melee.
That was when things turned truly grim.
A jonin blocked a blow with a chakra-infused kunai — only for the blade to snap as a massive, jagged axe cleaved through his arm and ribcage in a single stroke. Another fell beneath a wild green brute who bit through his shoulder and used the corpse to beat back his squad.
No amount of taijutsu seemed to matter when a single creature could shrug off a dozen shuriken and crush a shinobi with its bare fists. His men aimed true, delivering killing blows to vitals, but these things died slowly. He saw many, indeed, die from the wounds but they didn't slow down until death took them, and this allowed for them to achieve individual pyrhhic victories against their slayers.
“Retreat!” someone screamed. “Fall back! Regroup!”
But there was nowhere to go.
At the heart of the chaos, Gaara stood unmoving — sand already swirling high around him, his gourd long since broken. Shukaku’s chakra bubbled up from beneath his skin, a writhing storm of malevolence and ancient power. But there was no transformation. Not this time.
Gaara raised both hands.
And the desert answered.
Miles of sand heaved as if breathing. The battlefield shifted — no longer passive, no longer dead weight. Chakra flooded every grain, every particle, binding them together in razor cohesion. The sky darkened as entire dunes lifted into the air like ocean waves.
The Orks didn’t pause. They only screamed louder.
And Gaara crushed them.
Not with a blast. Not with a single technique. But with the entire desert.
Walls of sand closed in like jaws. Tunnels swallowed the screaming hordes. Buried alive, limbs snapped and bones shattered. He ripped them apart like the lefs of insects. All were engulfed. Those too strong were compressed under ten thousand tons of chakra-hardened earth. Screams became muffled gurgles. Blood soaked into the sand — and vanished.
In minutes, the front was silent.
Only Gaara remained standing at the edge of a battlefield turned mass grave. His hands trembled, but he did not fall. Around him, nothing stirred but the wind. A few moments later, his own men, dug themselves out of the shallow sands.
He had buried them too, but not shredded them.
Sunagakure had survived the first day.
But at a terrible cost.
The desert was silent as the sun rose on the next day.
Only the wind stirred now — hot and dry, as always — but even it seemed cautious, whispering low across a field of death.
Jonin squads moved through the aftermath like ghosts. Sand and glass crunched beneath their feet, but it was no longer just sand. The very earth had been changed — vitrified in places, molten and refrozen into twisted sheets of glass laced with blackened gore. Splintered bones jutted from dunes like broken stakes. Shattered teeth, slivers of metal, and scraps of green flesh were half-buried, scattered like confetti from a nightmare.
“Is this all… from last night?” a Chunin whispered, kneeling beside what looked like a torn arm — the fingers still twitching.
“There were more,” his captain muttered. “The sand took them.”
They had not seen the full scope in the chaos of night. Now, under the sun, the crater loomed.
They had never seen destruction like this, or at least never incurred in such a short amount of time— a jagged scar in the earth where the alien vessel had struck. The ship itself was less a ship and more a floating city, now embedded in the land like a rotting god’s corpse. Fungal growths coated its sides, some pulsing faintly with sick green light. Pipes belched thin trails of steam. Metal plating creaked and groaned like something alive.
The entire crater was surrounded by high walls and soldiers. They had worked over time through the night to contain the threat.
Had it landed even a few kilometers east… Sunagakure would have been glass and ash.
“I don’t like this,” one of the older shinobi murmured. “This thing wasn’t just built. It’s grown. Like a tumor with a forge inside.”
Gaara arrived at the perimeter on a platform of floating sand, flanked by Baki and two ANBU. His eyes swept the carnage without emotion.
“No one enters the vessel,” he said.
The order rippled out instantly.
“Expand the perimeter. Ten layers deep. Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out. Kill anything that tries.”
“But—”
“If something survived that,” Gaara said, his voice like sand over stone, “you wouldn’t survive it.”
The teams obeyed without further question.
They raised wards. Traps. Summoned scouts and detection webs. Seals were etched into the very glass, and sentries patrolled in shifts, eyes ever trained on the dead steel mountain that still hissed and steamed beneath the desert sun.
The world had changed overnight.
They had no name for what they had fought. No understanding of what had arrived. For now, the enemy was just mulched meat and bone in the sands, and no longer a threat.
Notes:
Yup. They are so screwed.
As you no doubt guess, this story starts at the beginning of Shippuden. I did this because I wanted as many of the Naruto characters as possible to be alive and kicking. And useful. I may wind up making the story a little AU by having the sound shinobi and maybe even Haku still be alive, but we'll see.There are some pairings, but they're minor characters. Like Kakuzu and Kuromo(Who you probably don't remember).
A fair warning about my Naruto fanfics. I count NOTHING after the 5 kage summit as canon aside from characters and kekkei genkai. Rinnegan being an evolution of sharingan? No. Juubi tree and fruit? No. Kaguya? No. Aliens? No. All of Boruto? No. Obito creating the Akatsuki when he wasn't even around yet when Nagato made it let alone in time to give Nagato the rinnegan? No.
I also always count all filler and movies as canon, aside from Naruto the last.
Concerning 40k I actually was too generous to the setting at first, before I went deeper into the NAruto lore and realized how competetive they are with things in 40k.
Slight spoiler:
Arc 1: Barely surviving an Ork invastion
Arc 2: Unification and militarization of the elemental nations while some shinobi go out to explore the stars for recon.
Arc 3: Minor necron invasion and near extinction.
Arc 4: Full grimdark, finally in the 40K universe at large.
Long story short, if the entire planet of Naruto came together and developed with the intent of competing in the 40K universe, they do both terribly and well. I will be as fair and canon to both settings as possible but please, no fanboying. I'm doing tons of research into orks to make sure their scaling to Naruto characters is accurate and am actually buffing them up a bit because 40k fanboys can be unbearable if I don't make squigs capable of killing super Saiyan god 85 Vageto with one punch.