A/N: AU for Naruto [no Juubi], no particular timeline for that series. Bleach is set post series. No spoilers.

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Schemer's Truth

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Kyuubi looked down at the boy with a malevolent grin. He knew what the child was there to ask, demand. But even trapped behind the bars of the seal, it was his power, his choice to give. Paying rent, indeed.

"Fox! Do you wanna die?"

No. He really had no desire to ever see those traitorous little bastards ever again. He'd managed for millennia to avoid them; even their monstrous counterparts from this dimension until that fateful night Madara had taken control. Instead of voicing his thoughts he chuckled. "Should I care, human? I will simply be reborn. You're the only one that will stay dead."

"Even you should have something you want to live for."

That little shit. He roared in fury, deep orange fur bristling with uncontained anger. "I am a demon, boy! I care for nothing!" A lie, a damned lie. "I live for death!" He had, ever since he'd first met her. Even though she, they weren't here, though they had all moved on. To the place with white haori and flashing blades, of fucking traitors that used and used and used until there was nothing left but something to be discarded. Thrown away.

Trash.

Wherever that skinny green-eyed bastard was, he was surely watching with smug righteousness.

A vague sensation in the back of his mind; voices long familiar but by now mostly silent. 'We have the power to deal with them, now. We just need to go there.' But the knowledge that they might still be there stayed his hand, every time. Soft eyes; a gentle healer's touch, strong silence, and smooth arrogance. And violet eyes, already dead but not so removed from the living that it was just a job. Friends. Comrades in arms.

Something to live for? Yes. But more than that, something to kill for, someday.

Not today.

Naruto looked skeptical but was quickly distracted. "We don't have time for this. Give me your damn chakra, fox."

"Time, boy? This is your mind. If you wish it, we have all the time in the world."

Naruto huffed angrily, but Kyuubi cut him off before he could reply.

Gold eyes rimmed in black watched the boy thoughtfully. "I have a question for you, brat, and think carefully before you answer. If you're right, I'll help you. If not," the fox shrugged, "that's up to you."

The young shinobi's eyes widened as he shifted into his human form, his true form, long unused. Orange hair fell into his eyes as, for the first time in thousands of years, Kyuubi lifted a heavy blade and asked,

"Tell me, boy, what's the difference between a king and his horse?"