He pressed the button, waiting for the click. The apartment door was broken and had been as long as he could remember. It was one of those fairly nice apartments that sat on the edge of a college city, overlooking everything below as if looking down on the campus, mocking the fact that the people who lived in this building could only afford to because they'd graduated and found their place in life. Either that or they had parents who were rich enough to buy their students such nice rooms and give them cars to drive to school on top of that. Still, in spite of all the money and the great looks, the door never worked. Apparently the owners had other things they wanted to spend the money on.
Finally, after pressing the button three times, he heard the small click that it had worked, and he moved to pull the door open, careful to not drop the bag in his other hand as he slipped through and made his way up the stairs.
Oddly, the apartment he was headed too, belonged to the one person in the building who didn't have a wealthy parent or a full time job. The one person who just seemed to shrug at the world and walk around all the rules, because – in his own words – it was too troublesome to follow them completely. And, as usual, he found the door unlocked.
Chouji stepped in and his eyes scanned the small one room apartment. What should have been the living room looked more like a bedroom with a couch. There were the normal pieces of furniture scattered about in something that almost looked ordered, with books and videos and clothes tucked onto shelves and boxes. A TV stand sat in the corner, complete with the VCR and cables sitting out, but the TV was gone. Chouji shook his head as he set the bag on the counter, knowing that the TV was still in the closet with the other boxes of items that weren't needed so had never been unpacked.
"Hey Shikamaru! Aren't you ever going to hook up that TV?" He asked, knocking on the bedroom door. He didn't wait for a response, instead he just wandered over to the small kitchen and set the bag of photo paper on the counter, rummaging through the cupboards for something to munch on while he waited for his friend to come out of his little bat cave.
Chouji had known Shikamaru for most of his life. The two had grown up in the same neighborhood and both had become good enough friends to follow each other to college and have the desire to stay in the same relative area. Chouji was still taking classes with the wish of starting his own restaurant chain - since it was the closest job he could think of to his real dream: food taste testing - while Shikamaru had wandered his way through the standard classes with a major in photography, managing to pay his way through and out of college with the photos he took and developed himself. Even Chouji had to admit he was good, even if he could never understand how people would pay so much for a simple photograph.
The door to the converted bedroom opened, revealing the room to be filled with a dark red light, and Shikamaru wandered out into the kitchen, frowning at a photo. He didn't glance up at Chouji and instead just crossed the living room, weaving his way around the couch, to drop a couple film canisters in a bag that was nearly overflowing with the same items. Once there he stopped and just frowned at the picture.
Meanwhile Chouji found a bag of chips in the cupboard and happily opened it, munching on them quietly, even though the sound filled the silent room. "That picture that interesting?"
"Do foxes have two tails?"
Chouji blinked. "Uhh, no. I'm not in biology or nature class, but I'm pretty sure they don't have two tails."
Shikamaru frowned more at that and walked over to the window, still looking at the picture with a puzzled expression. "What about… those frogs? The ones with extra legs because of pollution or something."
Chouji shrugged, enjoying more chips. "I bet the restaurant industry loves them because it's more for less, but I really don't see the value in two tails." Another moment of silence and Chouji shook his head, seeing that Shikamaru wasn't going to let this subject up. He set down the bag of chips and walked over to him. "Lemme see the picture."
His friend glanced up at him for the first time, then nodded and turned the photo so Chouji could see. He knew from experience that you don't touch new photos, especially not with chip grease covered hands, so Chouji just leaned forward a bit to look. Luckily the picture was quite big, so it was pretty easy to see the details.
On the photo paper, in color, was a completely white fox, albino from head to toe, standing out in perfect contrast to the colored surroundings that filled the rest of the picture. Chouji never understood why people would pay for pictures like this but he had to always admit that Shikamaru had talent. Loads of it. Still…. He couldn't help but say the first thing that came to mind.
"Foxes are white?"
Shikamaru blinked in confusion, and then a small smile crossed his face. "Moron."
Chouji just flashed him a bright grin. Mission complete, he'd made Shikamaru stop looking so worried. "What? I've never seen a white fox before."
"It has two tails, idiot." Shikamaru tossed out the word simply as a statement, but it didn't matter. Chouji knew he didn't mean it. Instead, Shikamaru only called him an idiot or a moron when Chouji intentionally did something stupid to make Shikamaru smile or stop worrying. So in a way, perhaps, it was a compliment.
Chouji looked at the photo again and shrugged, mimicking how Shikamaru usually reacted to weird things just out of habit. Ok, he was right, it did look like it had two tails, but some animals were just strange like that. He actually wasn't surprised that some animal popped up with two tails or two more ears or even a couple extra limbs. "Maybe you can sell it to a magazine… you know, those black and white ones they have at the front of grocery isles."
"I don't sell pictures to tabloids." Shikamaru looked at the picture again, then sighed softly and dropped onto the couch which doubled as his bed. The bedroom of the apartment had been converted into a massive darkroom for his pictures and as a result he slept out in the living room. It at least explained the half-assed décor, but it also told that Shikamaru took his 'job' more seriously then anyone would have ever thought he did. Pictures came first, sleep was just a short daily hobby.
"Maybe someone dropped a virus in your camera or something."
"Chouji, viruses attack people and computers, not cameras."
"And cell phones. I heard it on the news." Chouji walked back to the counter and retrieved his bag of chips, perfectly happy to go back to eating now that he didn't need to look at the picture anymore.
"Maybe if it was a digital camera, but this isn't. Viruses and things like that can't infect normal cameras."
"And they couldn't infect computers a couple years ago. You never know."
Shikamaru seemed to consider that for a moment and finally put the picture down on the table, leaning back on his couch. Staring up at the ceiling his hands fell into an odd triangle shape that Chouji recognized as a sure sign that his friend was thinking about this and thinking real hard. It was also a sign that there really wasn't much else to say and he should probably head back to his dorm to start doing homework.
He tossed the empty bag of chips into a garbage can and wiped off his hands, then moved for the door, tossing a wave back in Shikamaru's direction. "The photo paper is on the counter, see ya later." Then he headed out the door.
Shikamaru heard the door shut, but he didn't turn his head. His mind wasn't on Chouji at the moment and he didn't need to really think about it. Chouji had known him long enough to know that he hadn't been brushed off, this was just the way Shikamaru's mind worked, one subject at a time. So instead of responding he just sat on the couch, mulling over everything in his mind.
Foxes didn't have two tails, that much was easy to tell. He remembered the area where he'd taken the picture and he knew for a fact it was a city park, surrounded by houses and a more upper-class neighborhood that stood far enough away from campus to not be bothered by the drunken college students. So any notion of pollution or a dump toxic enough to create such mutation was out of the question. He would have heard an uproar about that long before any animals had the chance to mutate.
The idea of a virus getting into his camera could also be easily ruled out. For one, such things wouldn't cause an extra limb or tail to appear in a photo. As far as he knew no such virus could add parts to a picture, though it did sound like the type of thing bored people would come up with to amuse themselves on other people's computers. Add on to that the fact that viruses traveled by way of internet connections, that also ruled out that option as his camera was a perfectly new, non digital camera he'd bought last year as a semi-graduation gift for himself. His camera dealt in real film, manual focusing and automatic winding, it certainly wasn't computer material.
So really the only option left – aside from believing there actually is a fox with two tails – was to assume there was something wrong with his camera. He doubted a flaw in the camera itself would cause such a thing, but he had experienced odd tricks with film where one picture overlaid the other when the camera failed to wind the film correctly. Such a glitch could potential cause such an illusion, but not usually with such detail. Still, it was the most realistic option available and certainly worth checking out.
Opening his eyes, Shikamaru glanced at the bag of photo paper sitting on the kitchen counter. Hadn't he asked Chouji to stop by the photo shop for him so he didn't have to? But now, as things turned out, he had to anyway. Shikamaru groaned as he stood up to gather his things.
How troublesome.
The photo shop was located downtown, which was about as downtown as any college town could get. This, of course, translated to one street packed with a mix of pawn shops, bars and night clubs that catered to the occasional wish of a college student to blow financial aid money on designer clothes and booze. It was nothing high class, though the city tried to make it appear that way with various stone sculptures that took up more sidewalk space then they were worth parked in front of the library and police station. Meanwhile the rest of the block was painted in bright mismatching signs, burnt colored buildings of brick and various groups of students huddled in front of the coffee shop which seemed to be the building which received the most amount of use. And in the back, just behind the coffee shop, dwarfed by the large playhouse converted into a half comic book store and a beauty shop, sat his destination.
Shikamaru stepped off the bus and into the building, to find it quite empty, as usual. Cameras and camera parts hung all over the room like some electronic herb garden with occasional photos attached to the walls. A desk cut the small store in half with the door to a dark room in the back and a boy sitting at the computer on the desk, playing with photos with some fancy digital photo program that probably cost more then the store itself. Another boy, with blond hair was leaning over the counter, eagerly watching the computer screen with interest, making it look like Shikamaru was interrupting the hushed conversation of a loving couple, except that they were both boys.
The boy at the computer looked up as Shikamaru's entrance caused the bell to ring.
"Chouji forget to get something?" Technically, he wasn't a boy. Technically Sasuke was a year older then Shikamaru and had already graduated college with a degree in computer graphics and was now running his father's pet photo and camera shop. He was set for life, as long as the camera shop didn't go over, but with it being the only place to get photo supplies in the city and a growing class of such students at the college there was no chance of that. Sasuke had gone to the same high school as Shikamaru and Chouji, so the specification of boy just tended to follow up in Shikamaru's mind and he just didn't really care to correct his mental term.
"No. I need to get this looked at." Shikamaru walked up to the counter, only sparing a glance at the blond boy, and set down his camera.
Sasuke frowned at it. "It's brand new, what happened to it?"
He responded with a shrug. "My last batch of pictures came out strange. I don't want to waste another role of film just in case it was the camera."
"I'll be right back with it." And with that, Sasuke disappeared with the camera into the other back room.
Shikamaru couldn't help the frown on his face. He'd bought the camera himself and taken quite a bit of time selecting the exact one he'd wanted with all the right settings and feel for the dials. He wasn't particularly possessive over his things, it was too troublesome, but at the same time he didn't want to have to buy a new camera any time soon and shouldn't have to, so he figured he was entitled at least to being a bit protective. It struck him for a moment that his camera disappearing into a back room to be taken apart and looked at probably wasn't the best thing in the world, but then he shrugged it off and decided to just not worry about it.
"Can I see the photo?"
It was the blond one next to Shikamaru who spoke, reminding him that he'd actually brought the photo with him of the strange fox. He couldn't remember why he'd actually brought it, now that he thought about it.
With a shrug he set it on the counter.
"A two hundred year old fox, nice."
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow in question. "Foxes don't live that long."
The blond just grinned and jumped up on the counter, sitting with his legs swinging just slightly as he picked up the picture and looked at it closely. "Yeah, but according to Japanese mythology, foxes gain a new tail every century they live. They're supposed to be fantastic creatures with powers of illusion and mischief. I like the picture. I'll buy it from you."
Shikamaru considered that, glancing at the boy. He didn't particularly believe in mythology of magic or anything like that, as the world seemed complicated enough to him even without it so he didn't really care. Considering the strangeness of the picture, Chouji was probably right and no one would want it save for those black and white tabloids, but most of those pictures were computer images anyway and somehow the idea of one of his photos being overly warped by a computer just didn't appeal to him. There was no real reason for him to keep the photo, so he simply shrugged and named a modest price.
The blond smiled in response and pulled the cash from his pocket, handing it straight to Shikamaru. "Thanks!" Then he headed out the door, pausing only to call back to Sasuke a good bye before he disappeared down the street.
Minutes passed in silence, then Sasuke came out of the backroom and handed Shikamaru the camera. "It checks out, nothing wrong that I can find. I'd say it was your film."
"Guess so." He took the camera and slid the strap back over his neck. "Thanks."
Sasuke just nodded, already back on his computer and playing with whatever images he had on the screen. And that, it seemed, was the end of that.
Shikamaru left the shop with a shrug. It was just one photo and really not worth the trouble of worrying about any more then that.
Something like that wouldn't happen again.