Seriously? Why can't we find him? It's been 2 weeks!?"
They were now on a semi-urgent mission, Irina and Xenovia were tasked with finding Naruto and capturing him like usual. Only now they were being given access to Excalibur Destruction and Excalibur Mimic, the swords they used for their slaying missions. They were not to hurt Naruto, but his priority ranking had gone from low-priority to high-priority with the creation of just a small little stone.
The Philosopher stone that Naruto created.
Eternal life, regneration properties, the ability to turn ANY metal into Gold and Silver, the power to heal all forms of illness. The ability to create lamps that can burn forever, the ability to turn crystals into diamonds, reviving dead plants, and the ability to easily create clones and homunculus. The little stone that Naruto created, and by accident, was considered the ultimate form of Alchemy, the single greatest achievement of all alchemists that had only ever been achieved one other time in history, where a alchemist produced an immature stone that was white in color and not red.
Naruto had created a perfect mature Philosopher's stone.
His notes could change the world, and the one time they were looking for Naruto to capture and get him under the protection of the church, they weren't able to find him. They could usually easily find Naruto no problem, but now it seemed like he had vanished from Italy without a trace. They looked at all the usual places he would hang out to gather resources, and in none of those places could they find him.
They even visited the beach where Dan the Manphin was, and after Dan tried to have sex with Irina, they decided that it would be best not to go there again. If they killed Dan, they were pretty sure Naruto would never agree to join them.
"Where is he? There haven't even been word of pranks of his." Xenovia wondered with a deeper frown. She hoped that Naruto didn't accidentally hurt himself, or die, because that would just plain mean their mission failed. Also, she would be sad if such a worthy rival to her missions were to be killed by something.
-In Rome, Italy (Outside of Vatican City)-
"Sure you're able to be out here so freely like this?" Naruto asked as he walked with Asia slightly behind him. It was 5 in the afternoon for them now, and Asia had just finished whatever it was that she did during the day. She noticed that he was leaving the Vatican, and had wanted to follow him to see what he was doing.
She had become somewhat of an assistant, helper, and friend for him over the last week, and he had learned a bit about her.
She had the Sacred Gear "Twilight Healing" that allowed her to heal others, and people would travel from all over the world to get to the Vatican to recieve her healings. She couldn't heal disease, but any injury was something well within her ability to heal. She could even heal older injuries and not just the fresh ones. Her Sacred Gear was the very reason that she was declared a Saint and brought to the Vatican in the first place.
"There isn't anyone else that showed up for healing, and today is a day of rest anyway. You said you were going to collect ingredients today right? I would love to go shopping with you!" Asia had never been shopping before, or even spent the day with a friend. Since she met Naruto and spent time with him over the last week, she noticed something about him.
He failed a lot at his potions.
No matter how much he failed though, he kept learning from his mistakes and kept trying until he succeeded. Then, once Naruto succeeded it seemed that he would have gained a mastery over what he had been working with. He had a horrible memory, but when he had something memorized, there was nothing that could erase it from his mind.
"Shopping?" Naruto asked her. "Today, I've got to restock on beetle eggs, so I'm going to the forest. It's not going to be pretty work." Naruto stated to her. His beetle egg supply was about to run dry, and he needed that for a potion he was going to start developing to enhance his monsters.
Asia froze for a moment, before she kept walking.
"That's okay with me, I've never gone bug hunting before... eggs?" Asia questioned him on that.
"Yeah, eggs and cocoons are very good for magic potions. Some animals are more magical than others, and some organs from those animals have better properties. Rattlesnake venom is nice, but boomslang skin is WAY more magical. Yeah, they are both snakes, but the boomslang is just far more useful in magic. The same with eggs, larvae, grubs, and other stuff for bugs. The eggs and cocoons are the most magical stages." Naruto explained as he sat down on the bench and waited for the bus to come. They were going to be going to the edge of the city, and they would need to take the bus to get there with enough time to really search for what he needed.
"Bug eggs... just doesn't sound very... magical I guess?" Asia just didn't see how the bug eggs had a magical property to them.
Naruto smiled.
"Yeah, it doesn't seem that magical, but it is. Bug eggs, more exact beetle eggs, can be used in potions to enhance strength and growth. One jar can usually last me 3 months worth of experiments, so I want to get at least... 5 jars worth today." Naruto added on. That would give him about 15 months worth of experiments, which was over the year most people would aim for. That way he could have some extra wiggle room if he messed up a lot and kept having to use them.
The extra 3 months was wiggle room, and just in case he had trouble finding more eggs next year. At the moment, he had 1/3rd of a jar left, so he still wasn't out, but he was going to get to that point pretty soon.
-Much Later-
"Nice."
Naruto's reaction to Asia on her hands and knees, with her panties showing in his direction, a great view of her plump and taunt butt, as she used her gloved hand to move beetle eggs from the hole they had dug and into the jar. She wasn't seeing what he was looking at with how focused she was at her task, but Naruto couldn't help but appreciate such a fine view.
It didn't even matter if he had seen similiar things before.
Asia was attractive, and seeing her on her hands and knees before him would get a reaction out of him.
"What's nice?" Asia asked him.
"Your butt, I can see your butt, and it's nice." Naruto didn't lie about where he was looking either. He was SO tempted to test out his Slime Marbles to see what her ass would look like without panties, but at the same time he did need to get the bug eggs.
"Eh... EH!? I'm so sorry you had to see something so shameful!" Asia quickly changed how she was on the ground and smoothed her dress over her rear end. She had red cheeks, since she must have been showing him her butt for awhile now. She looked away from Naruto when he chuckled at her and continued to fill up his own jar.
He was making off like a bandit with a total of 7 jars, with Asia's help he was making a ton of progress. Not to mention with Pork sniffing out where the beetle eggs were hidden, everything was overall much easier than last year.
There was a roar.
Naruto looked at saw a very large and very brown bear, something that startled Asia to her feet. The bear seemed to have made this general area it's territory.
"Don't worry about your panties Asia, I've seen things way more perverted than that. Anyway, seems we have a guest. Hey there big guy, how you doing?" Naruto stood up and addressed the angry bear. Naruto took his glove off, and he drew a line in the dirt with his foot. Naruto bit his index finger and allowed some of his blood to flow.
His blood dripped from his finger and into the line in the dirt.
The bear roared and charged at them, only to slam face first into an invisible wall. The bear recoiled in pain from slamming into something using it's full force. Asia gave a shout of fear for a second and rushed to Naruto's side, and hid behind him. The bear swung it's large paw and just hit the same invisible wall.
"Wh-what is happening?" Asia whispered to Naruto when the bear kept trying to attack them, but it never got further than the line in the dirt that Naruto drew.
"Generally speaking, I'm not that great at controlling magic, so I don't make a ton of use of it. I could seriously end up hurting somebody, or myself, if I mess up. I need mediums and focus points for me to use magic. I just used a spell that uses my blood as a medium, and that line in the dirt is my focus point... there is an invisible wall of pressurized air between us and the bear." Naruto exclaimed his lack of skill proudly.
He sucked at magic.
If he didn't have the line in the dirt, he wouldn't be able to focus on where he wanted the wall of air to be. If he didn't use a medium, then he wouldn't be able to control how much of his magic he used for the spell. That was why he liked potions so much, they were such an easy medium, and he didn't have to focus his magic on creating the effects at all.
"Re... really?" Asia calmed down when she realized they were safe.
"Oh yeah, I'm really bad at magic, since I've never had a proper teacher. My parents were apparently naturally gifted though, because I can't find ANY tips about how they used magic in their notes. I've had to make do like this-" Naruto grabbed a lighter from his pocket and he flicked it. His wall of air would be able to defend against a bear with ease, but against any real supernatural opponent or anything smart enough to realize the line in the dirt was the only spot the wall protected, his wall of air was useless.
Which was why when Naruto plucked one of his hairs and filled it with magic, he lit it on fire with the lighter and transformed the flaming hair into a large fireball the size of a basketball that he held in his hand. Using the lighter and the medium for his magic, he created a basic fireball spell.
The bear saw it, turned around and started to run away.
"You're bad at magic, that was really cool though?" Asia had never seen somebody make a fireball in their hand.
"Well, it took me 5 seconds to use that fireball, and 4 seconds to create the wind barrier. Times like those are really bad for a mage. Anyway, we've got what we came here for, so lets go back to Vatican City." Naruto spoke as he loaded his jars up into his book. Naruto looked at the fireball in his hand, and he was not sure what he should do with it. "Ah! I've got an idea for you!" Naruto stated as he took one of his unused Slime Marbles and tossed it into the fire magic, and he stored it for later.
He REALLY needed to remember that one of the slime marbles was filled with a fireball, and NOT a slime. Naruto placed the marble in the wrong colored case to set it apart from the others.
"You can do that too?" Asia was really interested.
"That is why I love magic and stuff, you never know what you can do, until you try it for yourself. I love experimenting, I love testing the limits of what I can create, and to see new monsters and pervy things be brought into this world. Magic is so much fun for me, my life before magic..." Naruto paused for a moment. He stopped talking and his face changed in a subtle way, before he shook his head. "Magic has made my life so much fun, that I don't even care that I'm a poor and homeless. I'm living my life having fun, and because of magic, I've got to make my first friend." Naruto stated as he looked at Asia.
Naruto didn't like to think about his past, but whenever he experimented and made things that brought him joy, he could only see his future being something to look forward to. Every moment in the present he was making memories and having experiences that made him forget about his past.
"Your friend... me?" Asia smiled as she spoke under her breath.
Her first friend, and she was his first friend as well. That made her very happy to think that somebody valued her as a friend, and not just as a saint. She did look curiously at Naruto when she realized that the subtle change in his face when he mentioned his past.
She shouldn't ask though.
He would tell her when he was ready.