Disclaimer: I do not own GetBackers or any part of Getbackers. I should buy stock sometime...
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Casually leaned against one wall, the dark haired boy adjusted his sunglasses carefully.

He looked deceptively innocent, as if he were just relaxing or waiting slightly impatiently for someone to show up. Had he been in a park or on a street corner, he would have looked completely in place. However, in the middle of a rich man's manor, his presence was slightly abnormal. Still, to look at his countenance, one would never have known he wasn't perfectly at home in his surroundings.

The real telling part of his complete anomaly was not in his mussed sweatshirt and muddy sneakers (making a peculiar sight in the dark hardwood walls against the rich oriental carpet) or his purple glasses, though. That came when the windows began to rumble and a massive explosion erupted directly below his feet, and he smiled to himself as the manor plunged into darkness. If anyone had seen him they would have thought he was either a psychopath or an arsonist, but fortunately anyone in the manor who might have been in his area was off figuring out what had blown up. Taking advantage of the panic and obscurity, the boy stepped briskly away from his wall, and set off down the corridor.

The mission was top-priority, and nothing to sneeze at, either; the story had been public, on all the newspaper headlines. He had had to read them to his new partner, because the lightning brat had complained that reading things hurt his brain. "Reknowned Author's Manuscript Stolen" they all screeched, "Missing Manuscript Baffles Authorities" and the like. The author had offered them a substantial sum to recover it, and their sources had led him to the owner of this quasi-palace. And so Midou Ban was walking down this ornamental hallway, in shoes just a size too big and shirt at least two sizes too big, looking as cool as he could manage. Taking his sweet time picking his way down to the main room, thanks to the explosion granting him enough time to do things his own way, he shivered in the delight of a new job and the yet-unfamiliar sense of having somebody to rely on for help and distractions.

The dark corridor gave way to an open walkway over a central courtyard, and Ban paused, looking down. The sensation reminded him of a time before, a time still too raw to open completely and rifle through, the feeling of having friends, family almost, to run around with and create mischief with. A second explosion rocked the walkway, and as he grabbed the railing to steady his step, the scene below him blurred. He could have sworn for a moment that car had an older boy in it, and a girl with hair as short as his own, maybe shorter, laughing at the explosions and waving at him-

Bullets whizzed past his ear, waking him up suddenly, and the car no longer had specters of his past but rather assassins trained to kill him. Ban shook his head and broke into a run, propelling himself across the remainder of the open walk and diving into the main section of the house, landing unceremoniously on his rear. Gotta get it together, Midou. This is now and that was then. Focus before you screw up again!

Tossing his head one more time to clear the persistent voice from the inside of his head (and failing, to his chagrin), Ban slipped into the shadows and proceeded down the hallway. Manor security knew he was here now; nothing he could do about that other than apologize to Ginji later for ruining the point of his distraction. Maybe, if he was feeling generous towards the brat. They had only been working together for a few months at best, not even half a year since they inherited the Getbackers name, and Ginji was still in a stage of testing out his new partner's powers. Well, the brat hadn't even scratched the surface, but surely this would reflect poorly on him-

Creeping along in the hallway shadows, mind lost in thoughts of his own pride and past, Ban almost missed the tiny click coming from farther down the hallway. Almost, but even wrapped in thought, his sense of survival tuned in on it immediately, sending him instantly diving to the floor. After the first salvo of bullets rushed by his head- almost silent guns, this rich man doesn't skimp on his security flashed through his subconscious- Ban leapt to his feet and pinpointed the location of the shots- directly facing him, behind two suits of armor, thinking it would conceal them. A second smile flitted across his face, and while his ears registered a second click as their magazines fell into place, his body was travelling, and he was behind them, concussing them with their own defenses before they had even noticed he had moved.

Brushing his hands off decisively, Ban propped the unconscious bodies against the wall. He had made a clatter with the helmets and the armor hitting them, but he felt reasonably confident that nobody knew he was here. It was still dark, after all, and due to the lack of power, surely the main forces were all down at the generator. Straightening up, though, he sensed something moving at the end of the hallway, and not unsubtly, either. Maybe he had overestimated this man's security after all. Using the soft carpet to cushion his movement, in a second Ban was at the other end of the hallway, behind his opponent, who looked up, as if confused that something had gone by him-

And Ban was at his throat, holding him in a tight lock from behind, choking off his air with a carefully placed elbow to the throat.

"Don't move until I tell you to. I'll give you three seconds to talk. Where is this manuscript and how many of you are in this manor?"

All he got were muffled squeals and some kicking, so he fractionally reduced the pressure on his captive's throat. "You were saying?"

At that moment, the lighting flickered, and with a light hiss all the overhead lights powered back into existence. Ban registered who he was holding- blonde hair, overly spiky, squirming too much- oh no- and let him go immediately. That had no effect whatsoever, as the blonde limpet attached himself to Ban immediately afterwards anyways.

"Ban-chaaan, I found you!"

"Let go of me, you idiot! I should have known it was you when I grabbed hold and you smelled like half-dead things… even the security here washes their hair from time to time, you know. Didn't bother with it in the Limitless Fortress?"

A pout of protest, and the arms retracted from Ban's torso. "We didn't exactly have shampoo you know- and you don't wash your hair any more than me, I bet it smells too!"

"Whatever, and stop calling me that anyways. That's Sir Midou Ban to you, lightning brat!"

"Well I'm not lightning brat; I'm A-MA-NO GI-N-"

Ginji was in the middle of reciting his name for Ban one more time when Ban picked him up and threw him to the floor, he himself dropping immediately after. Any protests from the other boy were silenced when they heard gunfire from the hallway behind them, and Ban cussed roundly.

"Goddamit, they knew I was here. My map says the room with the manuscript is directly around the corner on the right, metal door. You know what that means. We'll split up and meet there in fifteen seconds, agreed?"

A nod from Ginji, face still pressed into the carpet, and Ban released the pressure on his head. He flashed back to the direction of the gunshots, pulling every suit of armor along the hallway down along the way and tossing them in the vague direction "in front of him". The clatter of the bullets and the suits of armor caused enough confusion for Ban to slip behind his opponents- just low-life security after all, he supposed- and knock them out roundly.

Three more seconds and he was calmly walking up to the door and Ginji, brushing the dust of plaster and wallpaper shreds from his sweatshirt. He grinned at the other boy, who flashed him a huge smile before steadying his arm at his elbow and concentrating intensely. The smile slowly faded from Ban's face as he watched lightning amass at the other boy's hand, before Ginji plunged his fully charged hand onto the door handle and the door sizzled before swinging open compliantly. Ban stared at his sizzling hand, remembering it too well, attached to a completely different face. It was the eyes that held the similarity, infinitely cold, but with that spark behind them of the laughing Ginji that Ban knew. But Ban had overcome that lightning, and caught the falling boy behind the cold lightning lord in his arms, and here they were now.

Fortunately the door was not made of the same mettle as Ban, and Ginji had already traipsed into the room and grabbed the manuscript, chortling to himself and chattering to Ban about the money they would make from this. For the second time in one day Ban shook himself out of a reverie and traded a high-five with Ginji, smiling with half his heart. He barely knew anything about this new partner, and he himself didn't have the cleanest track record with partners. That was then and this is now the voice reminded him, and he tossed his too-long hair once more.

Adjusting his glasses, he grinned at the other boy before grabbing a chair and tossing it through the ornate arched window that highlighted the room, and made a mocking bow towards the new exit he had created. Sirens began wailing in the house as if to highlight the motion, and Ginji gawked.

"Well, shall we leave and collect our reward?"
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Ban and Ginji dashed through the door of the Honky Tonk a week later, scrabbling at stools and mock-fighting with each other before straightening up with matching beams on their faces, if one slightly more smug than the other.

"Yo, Paul! We want the best coffee you have!"

Paul didn't even glance up from his newspaper, and they saw his eyebrows raising, although it could have been at whatever he was reading.

"You mean you have money to pay for it?"

"Hey! Don't assume we never get jobs just because your coffee shop never gets customers-"

The eyebrows practically disappeared into ginger hair, and he peered up from the paper at Ban. "Being served here is a privilege that I can revoke at any time, Midou-kun."

But Ginji's huge, pleading eyes betrayed his partner, and Paul's face softened imperceptibly. "Well, coffee for the innocent one, at least. He knows how to mind his tongue!"

Ginji's cry of delight was drowned out by Ban's shouts of rage, and he dove on Ginji, preparing to thoroughly (pretend) to beat him up-

"Oi, lightning brat! You smell like perfume and shampoo and… what, did you take a bath for a change?"

Faint pink rushed at once to Ginji's face, as he stuttered defiantly back, "You told me I smelled! I've been using Paul's shower whenever you go out for more cigarettes- I just thought-"

"You thought what! You've been using our money on something dumb like that when there are plenty of excellent public fountains out there?"

Ginji continued to protest and yell, and Ban noted the red on his ears didn't fade, even when his face returned to a normal shade. But his mind was caught in a different argument, one he had held a long time ago, and Ginji's hair was falling out of focus to a darker shade, and was that a tattoo under his eye? His frame seemed somehow slimmer, but with the same pink ears, the same shouts reverberating in his ear-

"Ban-chan? Baaan? Are you listening to me at all?"

The scene sharpened into focus, and there was no slender girl, but rather a large and upset blonde teenager waving his hand in his face. Ban blinked several times to clear the afterimage of his prior partner from the unfamiliar setting, and a few more times to erase the dark young man smiling beside her, always beside her. Then the infinite heaviness settled back down on his shoulders, comfortable companions with the little voice in his head and the guilt sitting in his chest, and his eyes focused in on the lightning brat, Ginji. Ginji, the happy, Ginji, who needed saving as much as he loved saving people, Ginji, the innocent and guileless, Ginji, who didn't deserve to be hurt-

"Hey, Ginji, you know…"

But a look of delight at being addressed as anything other than "lightning brat" was spreading across the other boy's face, and Ban gave it up for the moment. Nobody was allowed to hurt his partner, who was swiftly becoming more like "family" every day, but he just wanted like hell to stop himself from being the person to break that promise. It was far too hard to protect your partner when you yourself were the greatest threat to him. But that goofy grin was contagious, and Ban found himself grinning back, completely contrary to his nature.

"…nah, forget about it."

His real power is much more dangerous than lightning, Ban ruminated, before allowing himself to be swept up and away by Ginji's enthusiasm once more.

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A/N: Meant to take place sometime after their first mission, when they're still feeling each other out, strengths and weaknesses, etc. I know he doesn't technically stop calling him "lightning brat" until after the Natsumi mission but deus ex machina man =D

Even when they're that young their relationship still has such strong roots in friendship and loyalty and trust and love and ahhh. Expect this fic to follow the development of their relationship through all of their missions at least through Marine Red (including all the BL that was going on behind the scenes that they totally just didn't show to keep it's rating from going up).

If you took the time to review I could improve my writing and make it better, I promise! .