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Thank you sir, but I expect a certain amount of pain.
- Early Edition / Gary Hobson

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"You'll have to use your other form", Inari stated over his half-full cup of coffee. They were sitting in what passed for a kitchen in Naruto's apartment, where the clock ticked the time so loud it was an audible companion.

Naruto stumbled fractionally on his way back from the kitchen, his feet barely missing the step. But his drink didn't spill a drop. He walked around the lone chair where Inari sat in a movement that did not meet eyes.

"Double pay. Tell them that I'll need double pay for that." His voice was flat, but not without emotion as he sat on the other end of the couch, drawing into himself as the steam from the coffee scorched his nose.

Inari sipped the hot liquid, and closed his eyes as he waited. Stalling..

Naruto pulled a bottle out from between the seat cusions and added the dark contents heartily to his own cup. Without glancing at him, Inari advised, "You know that's bad for you."

Naruto didn't meet his eyes.

He had tried explaining the transformation once to his only friend, but couldn't do proper justice to that feeling of bones shifting and muscles moving unnaturally. It wasn't something that words could ever convey. Only experience. You had to feel it to know it.

"It is something within me that I know exists but cannot see. A disease I cannot touch. I was left this cursed blood, but given no way to use it. What good is it being but half a human?" This was something he had said once during a conversation on his shape-shifting abilities.

Because Naruto could turn into only one thing: himself.

Surprisingly enough, his female form was actually a little taller than the male. He, of course, had grown up male - but he knew properties of his other gender. How to blend in as if he wore the mask his entire life.

"Where is it?" Naruto spoke his question into his cup, happily becoming intoxicated.

Inari looked up without speaking for a few seconds. He waited until Naruto looked straight at him before answering.

" .. The new place."

Naruto blinked. "What 'new place'? I just got back in town, you know, but I really didn't think I've been gone for that long."

A song got stuck in Inari's head all of a sudden and he yearned to sing 'I want a new drug.' But he went back to his coffee instead, trying not to hum tunelessly.

"Uchiha Itachi's." Inari didn't need to say more.

Naruto turned back to his own drink as well. "Oh," was all he could muster.

He remembered Itachi.

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The rainy streets are empty for nobody else has woken.
- Never Coming Home, Sting

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Shikamaru sipped his glass in the main lobby of the casino, where electic modern flowers were all that seperated the slot machines from the hotel-like section of the building. He could smell oils from the kitchens wafting up from behind him, tickling his nose and teasing his stomach.

Seated between him and poker tables on a solid leather couch was a dignified older woman, with white curls done up in pinks. Her dress looked like old apolstry - patterned flowers, fabric, and buttons. Her attention was soley focused on the open bible in her lap, which a perfectly thin nail traced the lines of, slowly.

He wasn't usually much of one for drinking, but the sky earlier this afternoon had not been one for landing and his plane didn't seem to want to cooperate like it should have. The gears stuck, the wheels didn't click in place, and all this with storm clouds raging around him.

Nara Shikamaru was a Denver pilot, but sometimes he got taken out to Los Angeles. A flight was a flight, you know?

From the heavens, LA looked like heaven on earth, all lit up from the insides-out better than the holiest of temples. And as he approached for touchdown, the casinos loomed up beside him - orndate, inanimate, glimmering little trees.

He put his glass to his lips again, and took another drink.

.. not every hotel-casino served chocolate milk at this hour. That was why he liked coming here.

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We are the ones they left behind.
- We Don't Need Another Hero, Thunderdom

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Inari and Naruto had grown for several years in the same town, at the same school.

Naruto had been an orphan with a rebellious streak and a smart mouth. He was trouble from the get-go, obviously enough. So, Inari was of course drawn to him like nothing else. They spent a lot of nights talking in the back alleys between buildings. Too reputed to venture back to Inari's home, Naruto never offered to go back to his.

Naruto was always sworn to be seen walking beneath the moon in a town so small they still turned their lights off at nine o'clock. He was unusual, and the town shunned him. To them Naruto was something they could easily do without. Though, to be true, he had done nothing to change those opinions. Inari only, knew some of the why.

"They all need something to believe in, Naruto. Just, something to believe in."

Naruto was never really one thing or another. It was an oddity, an abomination, a freak of nature to be able to do this, but he could. He could be both - both genders, though never at the same time. He had been born with such a strange ability, but Inari didn't know all the exact details of this history..

He just understood that Naruto could, and did, change his form at will. Naruto was never anything that was not esentially his body - male or female - and Inari had a lingering suspicion in the back of his mind that Naruto was not exactly human.

This was nothing he'd voice. But the thought was there.

(Inari never really knew what to say or do when Naruto spoke about his abnormalities, these strange traits that should not even be possible but were. Naruto would talk and talk, on and on, like Inari was taking part in a conversation instead of simply listening and trying not to look stupid for lack of what to say..)

Well, not completely human, atleast. From the way Naruto described her (with a faraway look and such soft words that Inari had to strain to hear them) his mother was as human as they came. Like the wind was human.

Nobody knew who Naruto's father was.

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There's a danger in loving somebody too much.
- Sometimes Love Aint Enough, Patty Smyth & Don Henley

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A young voice smoothed it's way across the loudspeakers, thick and rich in tones of legendary melody. His tongue had to be long, for the words he sung wound like a rooted rope over the crowd. It was all almost as intoxicating as the alcohol.

But the Uzumaki boy could only have been twelve from the slimness of his form as he moved unsteadily to the flow given by the singer. The sound was a poor puppet's strings, reaching only just so far. His hands held one that smiled at him, for they were both innocent and happy then.

His feet could have been quicker upon any other floor, but his eyes strayed not from the redness he saw in those lips as they breathed almost-kisses upon his nose. He was in love, and it showed upon his cheeks.

He traced the hip of the one in front of him. Smiling he lead by more halfness, into a language never learned.

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On the mountain was a treasure / Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore / They'd have it for their very own.
- One Tin Soldier, Coven

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Shikamaru was waiting, in the hotel lobby again, with a cup of whole milk in one hand.

He had taken the couch this time, and was stretched across the cushions so bodilessly that he could have been made of water.

Kiba approached him from behind, plans rolled up into a tight roll, and a devasting smile that spoke no good.

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