A sunny late-spring day found the GetBackers team having a nice picnic lunch in a small park somewhere in the middle of Illinois. The reason for their being very far from their home in Tokyo was yet another strange job. Their client had arranged for the entire team to fly to America; however the item they were to retrieve was on the other side of the country. Thus, they were all on a very strange road trip.
Ginji and Ban had spent what little money they had on gas and yet another parking ticket for Little Miss Ladybug, Ban's beloved car. So thus, the boys were reduced to dumpster diving again for their lunch. Ban's haul consisted of some still-packaged, just barely past the expiration date food from a local grocery store, which he had swiped out from under Ginji's nose, much to his partner's annoyance. Out of spite, Ginji, who had lit their 'campfire' with his electric powers, was not letting Ban boil his water over their fire.
The rest of the group, having plenty of money to buy non-expired food, had sent Ms. Hevn out to pick up sandwiches or burgers at some nearby fast food joints. Shido helped her unpack the bag of food and hand out the food to the people who ordered it. Lunch consisted of a ham sandwich for Kazuki, burger for Shido, tacos for Ms. Hevn and Himiko, and another pair of turkey sandwiches for Dr. Jackal and Madoka. While he was setting down one of those turkey sandwiches, Shido was tackled from behind by Ginji, begging for food, and accidentally dropped one into the dirt. To which Ginji commented, "Uh, how 'bout that one's for Dr. Jackal?" and dusted some of the dirt off of it. Dr. Jackal himself was gone for the moment, probably doing something the rest of the group wanted nothing to do with.
Natsumi had brought her own lunch she had packed back before leaving Japan. She had opted for an oyster bento lunch over the more American food the rest of the group was eating.
Madoka and her seeing-eye-dog Mozart had wandered off to the nearby lake, where Mozart was currently chasing the geese. Shido went to sit by Madoka after unpacking the lunches. Being Shido, he had to summon a few of the local animals to come sit with them, so instead of his lion, today a few feral cats had joined them.
Himiko made a quick trip to a nearby park bathroom before starting on her lunch. Unfortunately, she noticed too late that the bathroom didn't have a sink for her to wash her hands in. There wasn't much she could really do about it but sigh and return to the waiting group. She washed her hands off in the lake water, as she figured that would be better than nothing, but she still didn't have any soap.
After they finally sat down to actually eat lunch, they realized that letting Ginji choose their picnic spot was probably not the smartest of ideas. The flies were literally swarming around them as they ate. At least the group could take some comfort that they weren't the only ones at the park to be waging war with the flies. A group of nearby college kids were waving their arms wildly around their picnic table.
After getting back on the road, the group soon realized that their picnic might not have been such a good idea. Ginji found himself suffering from some good old diarrhea, accompanied by cramping and nausea. Which he complained loudly about to Ban. Ginji's dumpster diving had given him a rotovirus, so he got to enjoy a bout of viral gastroenteritis.
Ban was not in any mood to put up with Ginji's whining, as he was dealing with some diarrhea of his own. Although giardiasis is often asymptomatic, with his luck, Ban had come down with some nasty Giardia induced diarrhea from his un-boiled lake water. He knew he should've swiped someone's bottled water when Ginji wouldn't let him have some of the boiled water.
Natsumi's oysters in her bento lunch turned out to be not quite as cooked as everyone else's sandwiches. She found herself with some dysentery-like gastroenteritis from C. jejuni.
Ms. Hevn was feeling sick after a day or so. Lucky her, she had Shigellosis, bloody diarrhea, fever and some cramps. This was due to the flies from the college kid's nasty food landing on Ms. Hevn's tacos.
Dr. Jackal wasn't stupid enough to eat the sandwich left for him on the table, especially not with Ginji grinning like that. He had thrown it away without eating it. However, he had taken his gloves off before handling the sandwich, and later eaten his lunch (which he had procured during his little outing) without washing his hands first. He came down with some itching, papular lesions and black eschar which he figured was caused by anthrax. There had been some B. anthracis present in the dirt his sandwich had landed in.
Himiko, not surprising, came down with cholera, due to some V. cholerae from the lake water. Shortly after the picnic, she came down with some massive diarrhea that could easily be described as 'rice-water stool'.
Watching the rest of the group coming down with such horrible diseases, Shido, the guy with the most contact with the animals that caused some of those diseases, managed to escape with a mild infection of listerosis that he didn't even notice. The L. monocytogenes he had ingested had proven to be the friendliest pathogen of the afternoon.
Due to some of the cats Shido had brought over to visit them, Madoka came down with toxoplasmosis. Her blindness and the droppings of the kitties had proven to be not the best of combinations. The T. gondii she had accidentally ingested gave her malaise and a fever.
Even Mozart the dog wasn't able to escape this picnic without coming down with something. While the dog had been busy chasing geese, he had helped himself to some of their droppings. Apparently the dog food Ms. Hevn had gotten for him was not as exciting as some goose poop. Unfortunately, the geese had left some S. enterica in their excrement. The dog started vomiting the morning after their picnic, which originally they attributed to all the driving. But when it lasted for a few days, the gang knew something was wrong.
Through all this Kazuki, who had handled his food with care, kept the flies away from through the use of his threads and stayed away from Shido's animal friends, still managed to come down with Traveler's diarrhea. The E. coli found in the middle of the United States turned out to be very different from the Japanese E. coli already living in his digestive tract.
In the end, the group managed to complete their job after several trips to assorted medical institutes. However, as it was the GetBacker's team, the entirety of the money they earned was spent on simply returning to Japan, and thus Ginji and Ban were broke once again.