Chapter 2 - "I got a powerful urge to help you out"

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, even the prompt.

Prompt is taken from Tsume Yuki's "Ain't Never Had a Friend Like Me." But with my own spin. I do have permission from Tsume Yuki for said spin. I also realize this prompt has been responded too before. I've read most that I've found. They're great. Go read them too.

…

This kid was plucky. I had to give him that.

I've been out of the bottle for a grand total of 15 minutes, give or take a handful of 5 minutes because my concept of time sucks now, and he's already asking for wishes.

But, looking around his apartment, and at the tiny kid himself, well… I got a powerful urge to help him out.

…..

Harry started at the kid, then grinned.

"Or what." He replied, a tiny grin curling at the corner of his lips.

Naruto's eyes narrowed, looking as angry as a tiny 10 year old could, "That doesn't answer my question."

"It wasn't supposed to." Harry replied immediately, pulling an apple out of nowhere to take a bite out of—just to make him look like more of an asshole.

Once more the genie known as Harry caused Naruto's entire thought process to restart.

"Hey, how'd you do that!?" he pointed an accusing finger at the man? Now eating an apple. Naruto really needed to figure out if the genie was a boy, because just because he said he wasn't a girl didn't mean he was a man, or something, right? (Don't think too hard on it Naruto).

"Magic." Harry replied, taking yet another bite, and kicking his asshole-ness up another level.

Naruto watched for a moment, slowly lowering his arm. Then words tumbled from his mouth, like they tended to do when people didn't learn how to filter their words.

"Can I have one?"

Pausing before his third asshole-bite, Harry turned to Naruto and stared. 'Oh. Hello Mirror,' he thought sarcastically, lowering his apple onto the table between them.

"Sure kid." Harry said as he pulled another apple from… somewhere… and tossed it to Naruto, who caught it with those wonderful in-training ninja skills of his.

"Thanks Genie-chan!" said Naruto with all the happiness he could muster, taking a nice big bite and managing to NOT look like an asshole as he did.

The two sat in silence as they both consumed their fruit, Harry brooding and Naruto happily. Naruto was happy because fruit was delicious and this fruit was exceedingly fresh, as if it had just been plucked from a tree. At least, it's what he imagined an apple that had just been plucked from a tree would taste like. He didn't know.

Harry was brooding because for the first time since getting stuck in that damned bottle, he wanted to help the person who had released him. That wasn't like him. Very much so not like him. He'd always had the choice about who he could help when he was out of the lamp, but he'd never helped anyone before. People were stupid. He hated people. But this kid tugged at his heart strings in a way he hadn't had since his godson Teddy.

Sending a glance over towards Naruto, Harry had to sigh, again. 'Fuck,' he thought, 'I'm going to help him, aren't I?' It was a rhetorical question, of course, so it was understandable when a loud voice said.

OF COURSE MASTER. IT WOULD BE GOOD FOR BOTH OF YOU.

Tiny Harry just about jumped out of his skin, looking around the room. Naruto, an equally tiny boy, jumped as well.

"WHAT, WHO IS IT?!" Naruto had grabbed the first weapon he could—a scrub brush he had planned to use to clean up the cool bottle—as if it was a kunai.

Naruto though couldn't see Death. Harry could.

Venomous greens looked over at the personification of Death and glared for all they were worth.

HE HAS MY MARK ON HIM AS WELL MASTER, Death began, I CAN FEEL IT.

'Well isn't that interesting?' thought Harry, glancing from Death to Naruto. Naruto, who still was on edge since his? … The genie was looking at nothing—or was he looking at the plant? It was a pretty cool plant.

HELP HIM MASTER. Death said before leaving between one moment in time and the next. Harry turned to look at Naruto and just smiled.

"Seems to be your lucky day, blondie." Harry words were responded to in a most natural way for Naruto: he yelled and threw the scrub brush at the genie.

…..

One of the first things Harry knew he had to do if he was going to be staying was to get his own space. Unless Naruto sent Harry back into the bottle—and he sure as fuck wasn't going to tell the kid how to do that—Harry needed his own room. So he went about doing just that.

Getting up from the floor, cracking a few joints in the process, Harry looked around the room he had been released into. It was small, but satisfactory for one person. One person that was now two.

Harry didn't bother to ask as he wandered out of the room, checking the door that lead to a hallway. Two more doors: one to a kitchen, one to a bathroom that had yet another door and more bathroom in there. Huh, Japanese style bathroom. Cool.

Returning to the hallway outside of the bathroom, Harry faced that wall in contemplation. Naruto had followed Harry around during his introspection and stared at the genie as he stared at his wall.

"Whatcha doing." Naruto asked, though his voice didn't lilt into a question.

"Making a room for myself," Harry replied in much the same tone, with his –to Naruto—strange accent. Before Naruto could ask more, Harry thrust out his arm and touched the wall. With a pop and a poof a door appeared on the wall in an extremely different style to the rest of the apartment.

"Huh, oops. Meant to make it blend it," Harry muttered, not removing his hand quite yet since he was still feeding his magic into the spell.

Seeing another piece of magic made Naruto shout, staring at the new door in his apartment. 'Oh shit, jiji is gonna be so mad…' Naruto bemoaned, grabbing at his hair.

"And finished," said Harry with a smile, removing his hand from the wall and opening the door. It opened into a large room, larger than Naruto's room, and filled with furniture.

Naruto stared into the room then bolted for his balcony, leaning as far as he could to see the room that should be floating in mid-air from his apartment building, only he saw…. Nothing!? Not even that distortion in the air that Iruka had told him meant there was a genjutsu going on!? What the f-.

"Don't fall." Harry appeared behind Naruto, startling the 10 year old into loosening his grip and almost doing what Harry said not to. A little help from the genie and the blond ninja-wannabe was back into his apartment.

"HOW DID YOU DO THAT?" Naruto demanded, staring at Harry for all but two seconds before running back to the, apparently, new room of his apartment.

"Magic," retorted Harry with amusement, following behind his lamp holder.

Muttering the word that the genie had said twice now under his breath, Naruto took in the new room. The style was vastly different from the rest of his apartment, but cool in its own right.

"Magic is awesome, dattebayo," Naruto finally concluded, looking at his genie with a beaming smile.

"Yes it is," Harry agreed, going over to sit on his magically created couch. "Speaking of, I've decided to help you, Blondie."

Naruto's mouth dropped over to speak his denial of the name bestowed upon him (again?) but then Naruto's brain registered what the genie said.

"Help me?" asked Naruto, tilting his head before going over towards one of the chairs near Harry. "Help me…. How?"

Harry made an elegant motion out of shrugging before giving Naruto a smile—border line grin, but whatever.

"You know, help. You said it yourself, I'm a genie—or whatever—so. I'm going to help you."

"…. But…. How."

There was a bit of a staring contest between the two… then Harry just shrugged again.

"I haven't foggiest. What do you want me to do?" Harry eventually answered.

Naruto adopted a thinking pose, tapping his bottom lip with his finger. He had a lot of ideas of things to ask for. Things that ranged from the ridiculous, to the obscene, to the stupid. But then that small, tiny, infinitesimal, practical part of Naruto's brain spoke up. Giving a glance around the room that Harry had just created with Magic, he looked at the genie and said his first wish.

"Can you make my apartment better?"

…..

AN: I'm honored with the response thus far. Thanks everybody.