Minato had sent a messenger hawk with a letter calling him back to the village the moment they returned after hitting the border, but he didn't go into any details in the message in case it was intercepted by hostiles.
But it depended on where he was in the Elemental Nations at the moment, just how long it would take for the message to get to him, along how long it would take him to get back.
Two weeks was a long time for someone like Jiraiya, and he could cover a lot of ground in that.
Though Minato had used one of their codes to stress the urgency of the situation, so when he did get the message the old pervert would no doubt come running as fast as he could to see what the problem was.
Letting out a tired sigh Kushina stood up and walked over to Naruto's desk, her hand gentle over the top as another tear fell from the corner of her eye. However before she could start crying again, something caught her eye. One of the draws on the desk was partly open, just enough for her to see that it was empty.
Wiping the tear from her face Kushina pulled the draw out completely and felt around the back to make sure, still finding nothing before moving on to a different draw.
All of them were empty.
Feeling a hard lump start to form in her stomach, Kushina slowly walked over to the dresser on the other side of the room. Her hands shaking, she grabbed the handle and pulled it open.
Nothing
This wasn't right, kidnappers don't waste time packing. They didn't give the person they were kidnapping time to grab a change of clothes, or other things…Eye widening as a new thought occurred to her, Kushina quickly had to grab the dresser for balance when she was hit with a dizzy spell.
The edges of her vision were starting to go black as her head continued to spin with the new realisation, but before she could even fully think the words through in her head the world faded completely and Kushina fell to the floor in a faint.
...
Naruto and Victor took shelter from the storm in the hollow of one of the giant trees in the forest, the pair having long left the Loggers outpost behind them. A large billowing cloud of smoke and a single large mound that covered the site of a mass burial, being the only things left that would signify what had happened.
Not that many people would ever look into it, it would instead be just written off as a bandit attack gone wrong.
Naruto had been more than a little disturbed when Victor hid the scroll containing the 'spare parts' he had collected inside his own body…literally. The boy had undone one of the stiches on his stomach and put the scroll inside before sowing it back up again as if nothing had happened.
The two of them stayed in the hollow tree until the worst of the storm had passed, at least for the moment and got a few hours of sleep. Naruto had not taken his mask off since he had met Victor despite the boy mocking it several times, and while he doubted the boy would recognise him even if he did take it off; he had no intention of removing it anytime soon.
In fact Naruto decided that the only time he was going to remove it was when he started adding the Seals he wanted to add to it, which meant he had to first learn Fuinjutsu properly, though thinking about how long that might take, he was considering replacing the mask with something more convenient.
But for the moment although his blonde hair was a bit unusual, it was nothing compared to the birthmarks on his face, those were traits that only three people were known to have, and all it would take is someone mentioning seeing a blonde boy with whisker like birthmarks, and all of Naruto's efforts would have been for nothing.
But having left the shelter of the tree hours ago the two boys now found themselves soaked to the bone, Victor's hair plastered to his head and glasses steamed up to the point he was forced to take them off every few minutes to clean them. Naruto was spared the worst of it by his hood, which had not come down since they had started walking again.
While it would have been faster to travel by Tree Jumping for Naruto, Victor was not as familiar with the method him not being a native of Konoha, and the heavy rain posed the increased possibility of slipping. Because of this and the fact Naruto had already put enough distance between himself and the village especially now that the rain was washing away his trail, the two boys were now quite comfortably walking at a steady pace in the direction of the Land of Water.
"So you said you are the first of your family to get this bloodline right, so that must mean you are working from scratch?" Victor asked a note of curiosity in his voice as he spoke to the younger boy.
Turning to look at Victor out of the corner of his eyes, Naruto took a moment to notice that other than needing to clean his glasses Victor didn't seem at all bothered by the rain in the slightest before answering.
"Basically, though I have been able to work out a few things by myself though. A…friend, gave me a scroll with the basics of Hand Seals and how they work."
His words seemed to bring a another grin to Victor's face, and Naruto was forced to stop when the older boy grabbed his arm and pulled him to a spot under a tree the rain wasn't able to get passed.
"I have got to see this, show me what you got!"
Licking his lips as he thought about whether or not he should show him, Naruto decided to give into his childish side and show off a little, after all having been looked down on his entire life he thought he was owed a bit of adulation. So with a mental shrug and a slight smile he started going through Hand Seals.
"Soul Release: Animal Spirit Summoning Jutsu."
Naruto took a deep breath while making the Seals, before letting it out with a dark bluish grey mass of chakra that looked a lot more like smoke then when he had first started to create the Jutsu. He kept breathing out as the smoke swirled around in the air in front of him, before it slowly started to drift to the floor.
He watched with a smirk behind his mask as the smoke like chakra started to take the form of a fox with purple eyes, Victor watched Naruto's actions a rare serious expression on his face as he crouched down to get a closer look of the ghost like fox the blonde had just summoned.
Only for the expression to quickly fade as he burst out laughing, another large grin returning to his lips as he leaned back on his heels. Taking offense to his new friends reaction, Naruto was about to complain before Victor stood back up and turned his grin on him, patting him on the shoulder as he did so.
"You my friend will be one of the most feared Shinobi in the Elemental Nations."
Naruto was stunned for a moment, and much to his shame when he tried to speak it came out in a slight stutter.
"W-what?"
Victor was once again crouched down in front of his Spirit by this point, one hand slowly reaching out to poke it.
"You think I can't see what this is, I watched you eat a load of Souls, and probably missed you eating a load more remember? You just coughed up the Soul of a Fox so I can only assume that at some point you ate the soul of that fox, meaning you keep some kind of imprint of the Souls original form after you consumed it.
If this holds true to human Souls too, then who knows the full extent of just what you can do. Hell you might even be able to absorb- ouch! What the hell?"
Victor was cut off mid-sentence when his finger finally made contact with the fox Spirit, only to pass through as if it really was made of smoke. However that wasn't the only thing that happened, as became apparent when the older boy pulled back his hand and looked at his finger.
The skin that had come into contact with the Spirit had turn dark grey, and much to Naruto's shock looked to be rotting away very quickly.
Victor showed little care as he pulled out a scalpel and cut the finger off of his hand, the digit falling to the floor at his feet. They watched in silence for a moment as the grey skin continued to rot away for a moment, before turning to each other with odd looks on their faces.
Naruto was confused, having not seen such a reaction before. But he had never used the Jutsu for anything but practice, so there were clearly more for him to learn. Victor on the other hand instead of looking upset about losing a finger, was only grinning wider as he pulled a new one out of one of the pockets of his coat and started to sow it onto his hand.
"You really are full of surprises you know that…you know I never actually got a name off of you."
Naruto absently dispelled the Spirit with a wave of his hand, taking a moment to consider what to say. He couldn't tell Victor his real name; it would defeat the point of wearing a mask after all. But at the same time the older boy needed something to address him by didn't he?
Apparently seeing his conflict despite him wearing a mask, Victor gave a small shrug and folded his arms behind his head casually.
"Hey don't worry about it, I figure if you are still wearing that crappy mask you don't want your real name getting around either…how about a nickname then?"
Naruto gave a relieved sigh, grateful for his new friends understanding and gave a small nod.
Victor's lips formed a smile that only boarded on a grin, holding his chin in a thinking pose as he seemed to consider what to call him before clicking his fingers.
"I've got it, I'll call you Ghosty!"
Naruto gave him a deadpan look that could be both seen and felt through his mask, before shaking his head and walking back out into the rain.
Victor followed a moment later, his hand once again on his chin.
"No? Ok how about Deadly McDeadface? Corpse Breath? Soul Sucker?"
This continued for the next hour, until Naruto finally had enough and sucker punched Victor in the stomach to shut him up.
They never did settle on a name by the end of it though.
...
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