note: spoilers for the supposed last arc still in progress in Japanland, "Get Back the Lost Time."
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Ginji is happy.
This is not a rare occurrence. He can more easily count the days that he is not than he is, but this is a different kind of happy. This is the kind that his has to force, just because that's what people expect from him now. It's almost real, because Paul tossed a pizza at Ban and then kicked them out, but then Paul didn't seem to be in a good mood.
Ban is also not happy, and Ginji wants to fix it. He feels the false-happiness deflate a little when he sees his partner sitting next to him in Ladybug-kun with a slice of pizza forgotten in his hands, having lapsed into silence.
"Ban-chaaan, what's the matter?" He puts on his best puppy-dog eyes - it always gets some reaction, and even anger would be better than this unnatural stillness in the car.
"Fuck off," he says, though there is no malice.
"But Baaaan-chaaaan..." Ginji pouts. "Ever since we left the Honky Tonk you haven't said a word!"
As if to spite him, Ban remains silent, though his eyes have moved from their blank staring out the windshield to Ginji, which is an improvement. "And, come to think of it, Paul wasn't in a very good mood either..."
There is still silence. Ginji sees this as a prompt to continue. He knows it can't be anything as simple as a fight - they argue all the time about Ban's tab but only get angry afterwards, not... sad. Which Ban is. And Ginji wants to know why but, like Ban always tells him, he's not smart enough to figure it out.
"Paul told me something about... this job," Ban finally offers. Ginji looks back to him and waits. "It runs deeper than just Kagami and Akabane. We knew that already, but not how deep. Fuck." That is followed by a string of similar words. Once Ban calms, he sighs. The melancholy that hung in the air earlier was changing into anger; his hand made a fist. "The one behind it is the ruler of the Beltline. You know anything about him?"
Ginji doesn't think he wants to know about him, by the way Ban's words smolder. "No. I just know there were a lot of monsters that came down from the Beltline. I never thought they had a leader."
"Probably only in name," Ban says with a snort. "Paul knows him."
"How?" Ginji asks, increasingly bewildered and frustrated with Ban's way of telling him things, which often involved not telling him anything at all.
"They were friends. A long time ago."
"Oh." Ginji doesn't know what this has to do with Ban, or why it makes him so sad, so he decides to ask but is interrupted before he can start.
"This - this guy, he wants to get into Babylon City. My damn grandma sealed the door shut so he couldn't get in, but there are keys. With that fucking hag dead, there's no one to stop him from getting the keys."
"Okay..."
"Himiko is one of the keys, dumbass," Ban says with a stab of irritation that Ginji is not understanding.
"How? Why? What do you mean 'key'? And who is he, anyway?"
"Stop with all the goddamn questions. How the hell would I know how or why? As if she ever told me jack-shit." An obscenity in every sentence means Ban is extremely angry, and bringing up Ban's family has the ability to do that.
"But who is he, Ban-chan? The leader of the Beltline?"
"He goes by the name der Kaiser," Ban finally says, though Ginji doesn't know why he didn't just say that in the first place.
Then something clicks. The way the name, which Ginji could never pronounce in a hundred years, flows easily from Ban's tongue - one used to speaking German even after 10 years of only Japanese. He thinks Ban might smack him for assuming things - he had been hit once because of his ignorance, the habit of Japanese people to assume all foreigners are related - but his hesitance to bring it up makes him wonder.
"Ban-chan... Do you know this del... this ruler?"
And Ginji almost regrets bringing it up. Ban gets that look he shot at Akabane before he attempted to throttle him for bringing up the same topic. "My father."
Ginji doesn't know what to say to that, so he remains silent. Ban has never mentioned his parents before - when he told Ginji about when he was younger, Ginji had noticed that conspicuous absense but hadn't commented on it - and did not seem pleased to do so.
"I have to stop him."
"We," Ginji corrects. "Because the 's' in Get Backers means we're not alone." Ban says nothing, but Ginji thinks he can see a twitch at the corner of his lips. "Let's go recover Himiko, Ban-chan!"
Rather than say something in assent, Ban started to mutter to himself in that language Ginji had always thought sounded like a growling monster.
"Ban-chan?"
Ban looks at him and something like that sadness is back in his eyes, but then he pushes up his glasses and it's gone. "Yeah, let's go. Let's aim for a higher place." Then he remembers himself and starts to grin, pulling out a cigarette. "'Cause we're the invincible Get Backers, and not even the worst fucking monster of the Beltline can stop us."
Ginji smiles back at him, if only because it's nice to see Ban back to normal - even if it is forced. Ginji can understand the feeling.
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I had Ginji follow the same train of thought as Himiko: der Kaiser German - Ban German - they MUST be related somehow. :B
Gist of what Ban was mumbling: "In the future you will meet a thunder god and together you will aim for a higher place. But the thunder god will have two faces... These two faces are two sides of the same coin. You will have to make your choice. To kill the thunder god, or be killed by the thunder god."
This is one of the many extremely accurate predictions Ban's elusive grandma seems fond of making. What a prophet.