Disclaimer: Naruto x Bleach - I own neither
Story Start!

"Damn, that Kurama is one bastard of a Vasto Lorde... this is the better than TV was when I was human."

Hollows, dead spirits who gained new life in the form of hollows, empty and heartless beings that had holes in their bodies, and white masks over their heads. Once human spirits who became corrupted by the years, and now ate human souls to fill the emptiness inside of themselves.

Several hollows of strange shapes and sizes gathered to watch the show.

A very humanoid hollow was standing in the middle of a clearing.

The entire top half of his head was covered by a fox-shaped mask, and he had white plates of armor all over his body, with 9 tails coming from the base of his spine. He actually wore ripped black pants that he stole from a being that he killed, and he had a sword at his side that he was holding with his right hand, something else that he had stolen from another spirit that he killed and consumed.

"... Is that a living human?"

"Oh, right, you just joined Kurama's pack. Kurama doesn't eat human souls, he savors them. He takes human children with strong soul pressure, takes them from the human world, and then spends days chasing them down until they beg him to kill them. I wish I was as patient as him... but human souls are just too delicious."

The child was only about 12 years old.

He was short for his age, and he had bright blond hair and peach skin. His eyes were bright blue and he was looking all around him. He was confused, before he had been tossed to the ground after being kidnapped by a strange man wearing strange armor with tails.

"What... who are you... what's going on?"

Kurama slashed the boy across the cheek with the sword he carried, without saying so much as a word before doing it. No warning, he just stained the white sand around them in blood. He pointed the sword up to his own cheek and showed he had 6 whisker marks, 3 on each of his cheeks.

"Run."

"What?"

"Run, run and I will chase you brat. If you survive until the day your cheeks look like mine, then I will allow you to live. So run, hide, and survive. I will devour you, bones and all." Kurama spoke as he looked down at the boy before him. That was all the explaination that he was going to give. He sat down in the sand and stabbed the sword into the sand in front of him. "I will give you 9 days head start, use them wisely my next meal." Kurama showed all of his sharp teeth in a dangerous grin.

The boy looked around and saw monsters in the bone white trees above him.

"Monsters..."

"Hollows, we eat human souls." Kurama saw fear in the boy's eyes, even as he started to run away. He just smirked to himself as he looked at the moon in the sky.

There was no day.

There was never day, only endless night, but that worked all right for him. He would count each hour that passed by, keeping track of the minutes. Of course, no human had ever survived long enough for him to actually give them enough scars to match his cheeks. They all collapsed from hunger and thirst long before then, and begged to be killed, put out of their misery. There was little water in their world.

9 hours.

19 hours.

29 hours.

Kurama kept sitting as he mentally kept track of where the boy's spiritual energy was going, and how far away he was getting. He was heading towards an area that did have small water holes, but overall nothing of importance. No food grew, so it was only a matter of time before he started to starve to death.

39 hours.

49 hours.

59 hours.

'Interesting... the boy hasn't collapsed of hunger yet... but he has slowed down.'

-With the Boy-

Naruto Uzumaki crawled across the sand as he lowered himself to drink from the water in front of him, his stomach growling powerfully. His body was covered completely in sand, and he had heavy bags under his eyes.

This was unreal.

He saw a tiny hollow lizard was scurrying across the sand, and he grabbed it with his bare hand. He hated it, but he had no choice. Bringing the small hollow up to his mouth, he bit into it raw and ripped flesh from it's body. He made sure not to damage it's mask at all, otherwise it would vanish like the others that he had tried this with. If they vanished, then they would vanish and the parts of them inside of his stomach would go away too. Leaving him just as hungry as before.

"... I'm going home."

That thought kept him going, it kept him eating and moving. He didn't know how long he had until that beast would start to chase him. He had to get as far away as possible, he needed to stay hidden when he could. His stomach growled in anger over what he was putting inside of it, and his hand went to his chest in pain when he felt his heart hurting. The pain in his chest was worth it though, because he needed to keep eating. Whenever he found a small enough hollow that he could eat, he ate it.

Touching them with his hands burned his skin like acid, and it hurt going down his throat too. Just touching the hollows caused him pain, but it was more than worth the pain.

He would live.

"I'm going to live."

-With Kurama-

89 hours.

99 hours.

"It's been almost 100 hours, and he hasn't collapsed yet... he's still making progress." Kurama sat perfectly still, it was almost the halfway point before he started to give genuine chase. Hollows touching humans could cause them to burn at the skin, so there was no way a human could hunt and eat hollows. Every human that had tried had simply failed because the pain was far too much, that was why he brought them here and didn't hunt them in the human world. He wanted to make sure that they would never be able to get food.

109 hours.

119 hours.

129 hours.

Kurama just stayed sitting there as he noticed that it was getting much harder to sense the boy, the boy's spirit energy was getting further away, and it was getting fuzzier.

-With Naruto-

"... Come on out, I'm sure Kurama won't mind if I take a little nibble... come on out boy! You'll live my bite!"

Naruto hid underneath a tree root as he watched a hollow sniffing around the area for him. He had learned that hollows didn't just smell for a scent, but the scent that they smelled seemed to be something else coming off of him. The same thing that he was learning to sense so that he could find prey to eat. It was hard to find small hollows he could eat, and as he ate them he started to learn what to sense.

'Stay hidden... stay low... keep your breath calm... I've got to live... I can't die here.' Naruto chanted to himself in his own head. He held his breath once his breathing was calmed down, and tried to sense his own energy feeling. He was learning to feel it, and he wanted to squash it down so that he didn't get sensed as much.

Naruto was covered in bruises where other hollows attacked him with rocks, they didn't try and eat him because they feared this Kurama, but he was figuring out how to hide himself from them. They made sure not to injure him to the point where he couldn't run and ruin this Kurama guy's fun.

Naruto snuck away without the hollow noticing.

-With Kurama-

199 hours.

209 hours.

"... this might be fun, he's still alive, I can feel his general direction, but he's hiding his spirit energy... this might actually be a fun hunt." Kurama stood up from where he was sitting. He didn't move from his spot, the boy still had 7 hours before it was time for him to truly hunt the boy. His eyes glowed red underneath his mask, and he waited.

212 hours.

216 hours.

218 hours.

Only minutes remained until the hunt began, and Kurama's mouth was starting to water at the thought of his first real hunt in ages. Never before had a human child had such a strong will to live that he seemed willing to eat hollows in order to survive like this. He could only imagine the kind of agony the boy put himself in by eating hollow meat, how the spiritual bodies from hollows didn't satisfy his hunger with real nutrients.

It was time.

-6 Months Later-

"Come on out brat! I know you're in this area, or don't you want your next whisker mark?!"

Kurama shouted in glee as he found the next hiding place that the boy had created for himself. This was his third time finding the boy, because the boy had managed to escape him both other times he had been found. With cheap tricks such as throwing sand into his eyes and running away, but the second he found him the next time, he would add another whisker mark to the boy.

"Don't you want your suffering to end, I can end it for you!?" Kurama taunted the boy.

A small blast hit him in the mask.

There he was, Naruto, standing behind the cover of a tree, holding his arm out. He gathered spiritual energy in front of himself and formed a yellow ball. He was sweating heavily, before he shot a second blast at Kurama. It didn't even damage him in the slightest, but Kurama was still surprised when he noticed that Naruto's hand was burned from using the attack.

"... so you've learned something... but that isn't a Cero, THIS is a Cero!" Kurama turned to face Naruto and pointed a finger at him. A bright red ball appeared in front of him. He pointed it dead straight at Naruto.

In a booming roar of a blast, he fired it.

By the skin of his teeth Naruto jumped out of the way as the cero ripped through the bone white trees and tore them down like paper. Kurama jumped into the air and landed in front of Naruto, slashing him across the face. He gave the boy another whisker mark, but he raised his sword again. This whisker mark was just a present to honor the last time that Naruto had escaped him, and now the boy had 4 of them on his face.

"Eat my ass!"

"Gladly boy!"

"Naruto Uzumaki!" Naruto shouted his name at the hollow that had been chasing him. He pointed both of his hands up at the hollow and formed another yellow ball. His chest burned painfully when he created the yellow ball.

Kurama just smirked.

Naruto slammed the yellow ball into the sand next to him, and blew it up, causing a giant sand smokescreen to cover the area. Kurama heard the scatter of feet and lowered his sword, unable to sense Naruto's spirit energy easily. He frowned for a moment, before he opened his mouth.

"Let me tell you boy, it's not enough to just have matching whisker marks, you've got to survive! Your tricks won't work on me for much longer! Soon, I'll stop holding back!" Kurama shouted his warning to the boy as the sand cleared, and Naruto was nowhere to be seen. Kurama stormed off and ran in a random direction.

...

Naruto's hand came out of the sand when Kurama was gone, and he panted, sucking in air with a grin on his face. He grabbed his chest painfully and coughed up blood onto the sand, before he grinned in the direction that Kurama ran off to. He had used his explosion to bury himself in the sand, knowing that Kurama would instantly give chase to him the second that he thought he had escaped.

"I'm going to... uuuuh..." Naruto clutched his chest in pain, and his stomach growled painfully. Using his spirit energy was starting to hurt him as of late, as if he was burning from the inside out. Naruto closed his eyes and tried to sense where the closest hollow he could fill his belly with was. It wasn't just enough to run and hide from Kurama, but he needed to do this while getting himself food and water. "... I will live..."

-2 Years Later-

5 whisker marks.

Naruto's body had grown bigger and stronger since the start, he was almost 15 years old now. Currently, he was eating a hollow that he had captured alive. It was a pretty good sized hollow as well, it would keep him fed for a few days until Kurama noticed that he was in this direction and started to chase him down.

"Hollow Eater... KURAMA! KURAMA, THE HUMAN IS HERE!"

"Shut up food, I'm going to eat you and fill my belly, and you're going to sit there and be eaten by me. You'll survive this." Naruto took another bite from the defeated hollow. Naruto beat the hollow with his fists as he eat him. No longer was he limited to just eating small hollows, and no longer did touching a hollow burn his body like acid. He had adjusted to eating them, and he hated the taste of hollows as much as ever. It was a vile, horrible taste, but he had grown used to it enough to know that his ability to use hollow powers became easier the more hollows he ate. "You'll become part of my strength... some day I'll force Kurama to take me back home... until I'm strong enough, I can't let him catch me again. Because next time..."

Next time he met Kurama would decide.

Kurama was not going to allow him to escape again, he would come at Naruto with his full strength, because next time they met would be when he got his 6th whisker mark. If he escaped Kurama 1 more time, he would be a free man. Kurama would not allow that to happen, so he would make sure that the next time they met would be the last time in their game of cat and mouse.

It was a long game.

Over 2 years and 6 months.

-3 Months Later-

"Hah... hah... hah."

Naruto gasped as he tried to catch his breath.

White puke came from his mouth while covering half of his face, Naruto was hidden inside of a cave and he struggled. The burning pain in his chest came back in full force, and he started to puke up white fluid that latched onto his face. It happened after he finished eating a hollow, and suddenly the pain he felt came back.

'Gotta keep my energy calmed down... can't let Kurama sense me.'

It was a struggle, because his power wanted to flood out of him all at once. It was a massive power that wanted to escape, but he couldn't allow it to. The power of the hollows he had eaten had been gathering inside of him with each hollow he ate. Their spiritual energy rested inside of him and gathered up, until their power started to become one with his soul.

Naruto struggled to keep the power inside of him as contained as possible, it felt nearly impossible to control. Even as most of his face was covered in a growing white mask. It took a simple fox-like shape to it in design, kitsune-like even with a simple spiral on the forehead, with whisker marks on the cheeks, and a spiky toothed grin going from cheek to cheek.

Naruto's spiritual energy spiked so high that he couldn't contain it.

This happened the second that Naruto's eyes turned red with the whites of his eyes turning black, and the mask finished forming on his face. Naruto smashed his hand against his head in response and shattered the mask. Standing up, his entire body hurt, but he didn't have time to listen to the pain.

'There was no way he didn't sense that, I need to move.' Naruto jumped up high into the air, he cleared a 40 foot jump easily. Something a young boy like him shouldn't be able to do, but Naruto had started to learn to enhance himself with his spiritual energies. He could move faster in the blink of an eye, but he didn't know what the technique was called.

-3 Months Later-

Naruto's cheek was bleeding.

Kurama had caught him, and put the final whisker mark on his cheeks.

"I've found you boy, and this time, you die. I'll admit, this has been a long hunt, the longest I've ever enjoyed... and your soul is now the most delicious I will ever enjoy. I don't think I'll ever enjoy another soul like yours, but our game ends now." Kurama pointed his stolen sword at Naruto. He then switched hands and charged up a cero.

Not even a small one like he did before.

A full strength cero that would destroy everything in it's path, he was going to make sure that he wiped out half of Naruto's body and ended him right there. He blasted it right at Naruto, but his eyes widened in surprise when Naruto ran towards him and dodged it by ducking underneath it. Naruto charged up a cero in his hands and shot it right at Kurama, hitting him square in the chest and blasting him backwards into a tree, and right through the tree.

"The game is over, because I'm not going to die here."

Kurama stood back up and looked down at his chest, where he noticed that the bone armor on his chest had been broken, and his white skinned chest had been burned by the attack.

"I actually felt that one, you're grown stronger for sure." Kurama couldn't deny that he was surprised by the fact the boy had actually managed to damage him. The attack could be improved a lot, but it packed a surprising punch to it for a cero not performed by a hollow. Kurama rushed towards Naruto with his sword, but the boy vanished from view and appeared nearly 30 feet away from him in the blink of an eye. "You've learned the Sonido... that static sound." Kurama had heard this sound before.

The sonido produced a booming static sound, it was the technique of hollows who had ripped their masks off and become Arrancar. They were a rare breed with powers similar to the reapers that hunted them. It was an instint-based technique though, so at some point the boy before him must had eaten enough hollows that part of his very soul was now hollow.

"Sonido... at least it has a name."

"You're still no match for me, you won't escape... you might have the powers of a maskless hollow, but your human body will fail you eventually."

"I'm going to live... I'm going to get stronger, and one day I'm going to eat you!" Naruto pointed his finger at Kurama, who paused for a moment. Kurama responded by pointing the tips of all 9 of his tails at Naruto, and forming 9 massive ceros on the tips of each one of them.

Naruto stared down the attack.

He gripped the air above his forehead, and he stared down Kurama the entire time the attack charged up.

"Nueve Cero, each of these ceros is 9 times stronger than my normal cero, and there are 9 of them... you will not escape and your sonido will not save you. Don't worry, I've got good aim." Kurama was going to make sure the boy didn't die, that he only lost his arms and legs in the attack. He was going to leave a blind spot right in the middle. "You move, you die... you stay still, you just might live boy."

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki, remember it." Naruto glared at Kurama.

Kurama fired.

-In the Human Realm-

Naruto was launched out of a portal.

He had seen hollows make these portals to the human realm before, but he knew that if he ever tried to make one, that he wouldn't be able to walk through it before Kurama attacked him. He didn't know how to walk on air like these hollows sometimes did, so his only chanced was to trick Kurama into blasting him through it.

His entire body was heavily burned.

A white mask was over his face, but it started to crumble away quickly. Naruto grinned as he looked down at his heavily damaged body. He looked up at the sun in the sky, and he laughed his heart out. He had to put his mask on, fire a cero to push back against the attack a little bit so he didn't get killed, and open the portal all at the same time.

"Hahahahaha!"

He lived.

"Oh my god, this boy is critically hurt!"

'This sunshine... how long has it been since I felt sunshine.' Naruto basked in the sunshine as his blood leaked onto the ground around him. People that were starting to notice him screamed out in pain and horror that he seemed to be close to death. He would be healed up in a matter of days if he could rest, but he did need to get his wounds tended to if he wanted to even have the chance to rest. "Oh... oh no... I'm blacking out..."

Naruto looked up at the clouds.

...

"I don't even have a family... I was just an orphan... why did I even want to come back here?" Naruto questioned himself when he realized he still had nothing. His situation was now just back to what it had been before, where he was all alone in the world, despite being surrounded by fellow humans. He had no family, and he had nobody who loved him, but his desire to live had been so strong for some reason.

"Get him to the nearest clinic, hurry!"

Naruto passed out from bloodloss.

Chapter End!
Please Leave Me Lots of Nice Long Reviews, But No Flames Please!

1. This uses a Naruto from Shippu Konoha Gakuen Den, but if he was kidnapped by a Hollow when he was a child.
2. The Inner Hollow forms when you inject enough Hollow soul into a person's soul, which Naruto did to himself by constantly eating hollows, which is how hollows evolve in the first place.
3. My friend wanted to binge watch Bleach, so watching it has been putting "Bleach vibes" into my head, since he asked me what would happen if a person ate a hollow, and it got me thinking of an interesting plot idea.