The sea stretched endlessly, flat as a polished mirror, reflecting stars, galaxies, stardust and colorefull lights. The horizon remained empty, horizon, this world had no scent, no movement below, and yet Elias was runing.
He had been running at full speed for an entire day without rest. His paws not making any splash against the water's surface, which seemed to support him out of some ancient respect for him just being there rather than physics. Elias was runing at full speed for full days without any breaks and without any stops.
His chakra refused to extend within this realm. It was like trying to stretch a shadow into sunlight—it dissolved instantly, disconnected and ineffective. His golden energy—still immature and raw—could hardly radiate more than three kilometers around him, and in a space that felt infinite, that range might as well have been nothing.
Still, something deep in his gut—his foxen instincts—told him there was something here. He couldn't explain it, there was no scent, no visible landmark, no sign of life, and yet… the pull was undeniable. It was like memory and instinct whispered together in his blood.
"What am I even looking for?" he murmured once, voice swallowed instantly by the eerie stillness. And no one answered him, so strange... how long ago did he experience this kind of situation for the last time?
Days passed. Then weeks. Then months.
He kept running—obsessively, mechanically. His paws moved like clockwork, his breath steady, eyes fixed on the silent nothing ahead.
And yet… even inside this abstract void, he could feel that he wasn't alone.
Back in the Outer World
Time passed differently outside.
Naruto had just turned twelve. Three months remained before he would try to graduate—again. His outbursts about becoming Hokage had become the subject of ridicule even more than before. The other students would laugh, whispering behind his back, saying he left a brown trail wherever he went—emotionally messy, always chasing attention, always trying too hard, to the point of...
Still, he kept going to class nomatter what, and it was a miracle in itself.
But this part of the story wasn't about him, it was about the cute adventures of a little cute fox!
Elias didn't remember when he first noticed the dark speck on the horizon.
It was almost indistinguishable from the sea. Just a smudge. A trick of light. But as he drew closer, the smudge gained weight and shape. After another two days of continuous running, he finally stood before it.
It was a boulder—colossal in size, submerged mostly in the sea, as though it had sunk long ago. Its surface was worn, weathered by time and something else... sorrow. But it wasn't the Titanic for sure, no french lady floating around.
Carved into the visible part was a face—a gentle, feminine face. Oh could it be the Titanic after all?
She was beautiful, in a strange, haunting way. The stone bore the weight of despair, and yet her features were delicate. Her eyebrows were ancient-looking: not lines but faint, dotted arches, refined and elegant. Her face was oval, with a soft jawline and high cheekbones. Her mouth was small and closed—almost solemn. Her nose, too, was narrow and dainty. Her almond-shaped eyes, though lifeless in the stone, suggested an innocence so intense it bordered on sacred. There was something almost animalistic in her charm—something that reminded Elias of a tiny, precious rabbit, fragile yet otherworldly.
But then there were the horns—or were they ears? Forget it, she wasn't french after all...
They grew oddly from her head, smooth and symmetrical, neither grotesque nor aggressive, but cutdge! They weren't threatening—they were simply... strangely... very cutdge! The stone around the top of her head was faintly etched to suggest hair, flowing back and merging with the boulder. And in the center of her forehead, just above the eyes, was a circular ornament—almost like a jewel or seal—but it was blurred, half-lost in the erosion of time.
Could it be her?
Elias's breath eccelerated. His heart thudded. There was only one way to be sure: the Foxidentification Protocol!
"Siffa... Sfniffa... Sniffa," Elias SNIFFAED, pacing slowly around the boulder, his muzzle twitching. His sharp foxen senses scanned every scent, taste, and twitch in the air.
"Sniffa... SNIFFA... sfniff, sniff—SNIFFA?!"
The stone smelled like stone—but the face, the closer he leaned, had a faint scent of familiarity. It was buried under layers of rock and time, but it was there. Something homey, something ancient.
Elias's eyes gleamed. Time for step two of the Foxidentification Protocol!
He leaned in... and licked it.
Yes, he licked the stone face.
The taste was oddly nostalgic, like the flavor of a food long forgotten, something your grandmother once cooked when you were too young to remember the name but never the warmth. He kept licking for several minutes—moving across the stone cheeks, the corner of the lips, the chin—trying to place that sensation.
Still, no clear memory surfaced. It lingered on the edge of thought like a dream slipping away at dawn.
He sighed. It wasn't Jack Dawson for sure.
Time for step three of the protocol: Take a chunk of the target for further testing.
But... well, it was stone. And here, in this strange dimension, physical laws didn't always apply the way they should. He couldn't take a piece. Not without disrupting something deep—something the Codex of Ancestral Fox Logic warned him not to tamper with: the itegrity of his cute little fox's teeth!
Foxinspection status: suspended.
But not abandoned.
He would return... and maybe find something that was lost over eighty years ago?
When Elias finally pulled himself out of the deep meditative trance, his body trembled slightly. The transition from that realm to this one was gentle but he needed to stretch! Still, he had learned something. The power of this place could be used on himself here, outside, and it could shield him against these strange laws he was weak against, alteast if the things turned bad he could run away now.
But eh, just when he did not expect it, outside became more interesting, what a good timing!