Having been fending off Hina's attempts to practice with the OOO Driver, Ankh thought it would be a simple matter to set up a practice session. It seemed, however, that nothing could ever just go smoothly, and he barely got a chance to talk to Hina, much less drag her out somewhere deserted enough that practicing with the Driver would go unnoticed. Before he could do so much as mention to her that the Driver would amplify any desires she had, he felt the unmistakable ripples of a Yummy he hadn't spawned.

Hina was in class; Ankh knew that much from living with her for months and half-heartedly noticing when she came and went. He knew more or less where the school was, and used the closest Ride Vendor to start towards it, calling Hina on the way. She didn't answer, predictably, and he wasn't about to search classroom by classroom. Luck was with him in that he saw her walking from building to building shortly after he pulled up.

"Ankh!" she said, clearly surprised. The two girls with her gave him surprised and appreciative looks, or maybe they were admiring the bike.

"We have to go," he told her. "Now."

Hina's eyes widened. "Another one?" she said.

"Now," Ankh repeated, and all but threw the spare helmet at her. Hina jammed it on her head and clambered onto the back of the bike, ignoring the startled questions from her classmates. Ankh accelerated as soon as she had half a grip on him; she startled and grabbed him so tightly he could hear his ribs creak before shifting so as to not break his spine.

The Yummy was more human-shaped than the last one had been, which was to say it walked on two legs rather than eight, but it still skittered on all four limbs at an unsettling pace as soon as they got close to it. It was covered in chitin, shading from charcoal black to pale dusty white, eyes covering its face and then running down its armor-covered back. It ran down the sidewalk, pausing to lay its hands and feet against everything that could even be vaguely categorized as a plant, and every time it did, the plant in question rippled and grew. The few trees in their sidewalk square plots grew massive, ripping up the concrete, while the flowers in a flower shop grew roots through the store floor and the pavement.

"Aim for the eyes," Ankh said, skidding to a halt and shoving the Driver at Hina.

She nodded, pushing the medals into the driver and scanning them with the awkward motions of someone learning the steps of a new action. The Driver didn't care how awkward she was; it sang the transformation song, and when the images and music faded away, OOO stood facing the Yummy. Hina stepped forward and the Yummy slipped back, the two of them circling around each other. The Yummy didn't turn tail and run, though, inching toward Hina and then back again as if it couldn't quite tell whether or not she was a plant, Ankh realized. He bit down on a laugh at that.

Any sense of humor Ankh found in the situation drained away as he felt the presence of another Greeed. It wasn't far away, but he couldn't see it from where he was. "I'll be right back," he said to Hina, who twitched but gave him a resolute thumbs up. Ankh took off at a run, towards where he knew the Greeed was hiding. It was in a narrow gap between two buildings, not more than half a block distant.

"Wait, you asshole," he muttered as its presence started to fade. "You're not getting away that easily. Not this time."

He nearly overbalanced rounding the corner, flailing wildly for just a second before coming to a halt to see nothing. The Greeed was gone. He could still feel it; he was right on top of it for half a second before it vanished entirely. Ankh shouted wordlessly and did not set the ground on fire. Suddenly remembering how the previous Yummy had hidden above them, he looked up, but there was nothing except for sky.

"Are you on the roof?" Something on the ground caught his eye; a manhole cover, directly in the center of the space, ever so slightly displaced. A patch of pale fur was caught on the edge, as if something had squeezed through the hole. "You miserable little bastard." The Greeed was hiding underground; either Kougami had lost it entirely or he'd purposely set it free.

The crashing noise of the fight behind him had subsided into the sound of falling Medals, and he turned back to see Hina pummeling the Yummy, pinning it to a wall with one foot and simply punching it until it exploded into a pile of Medals. Hina stood, panting slightly, before disengaging the transformation and sagging to her knees.

Ankh strolled up to her, taking the Driver out of her limp hands and looking carefully for any signs of incipient madness. Not that he knew what incipient madness on Hina would look like, but she looked more tired than anything else. "You okay?" he asked.

"No wonder Eiji had so much trouble with this," she said, giving him half a smile. "This is exhausting."

"You get used to it." Ankh made as if to help her to his feet, but the look she gave him – part frank disbelief, part deep suspicion – made him back off. He put the Driver back in its case and went to collect Medals.

Ankh's phone rang, just as he'd picked up the last of what he could find; it was pure dumb luck that he was facing Hina when he answered what should have been a perfectly standard call to find Kougami's face filling his screen. Hina looked at him questioningly, and he ignored her, willing her to understand that he wanted no part of her involvement to get back to the Kougami Foundation for as long as possible. "Boss," he said, just to see how Kougami would react.

"You found it!" Kougami roared. "Happy Birthday!"

Ankh did not feel the second sentiment was precisely correct, in this situation. "I found the Yummy. It has been dispatched. Any problems with that?"

"Should there be?" Kougami countered swiftly. "Your contract is still valid."

"My contract does not cover the use of the OOO Driver," Ankh replied, just as quickly. "Which was necessary in this instance, as the Yummy had matured before I got to it." He paused, too briefly for Kougami to start to reply, before saying, "I was under the impression that the Yummies were only to be released in a controlled environment."

"Nyah," Kougami said, making a disgusted face. "Things happen. They're rather clever, you know."

Ankh couldn't tell if the man was trying to cover up for deliberately releasing the Greeed or not. "They are," he agreed. "About the use of OOO." He let his voice trail off delicately, giving Kougami an opening. As he expected, Kougami focused on him.

"I'm glad you seem to be weathering its effects with greater ease," Kougami said. "Perhaps the same terms should apply."

"OOO causes substantial physical distress," Ankh returned. "A higher percentage of Medals is necessary to counter its destructive tendencies."

Kougami regarded him for a long moment, and then seemed to decide not to push the issue of Ankh potentially not being the one to wear the OOO armor. From there, it was all negotiation, which was done while Hina remained quiet and patient in the background. Ankh ended up with a final value of 80% for any fight involving OOO, carefully implying that he was the one wearing the suit without outright lying about it once. He felt it was a stunning accomplishment. Hina, when he finally ended the call, was not impressed.

"Seriously?" she said, and he didn't think he'd ever heard her sound quite this irritated. "What was that?"

"What was what?" Ankh tossed her the spare helmet, once she got to her feet.

"That," she said again, gesturing at him. "With… with the boss."

"I want to keep you out of this," Ankh said. "As much as possible. I don't know what kind of effect the Driver is going to have on you."

"So you just want to use me?" Hina stepped toward him, eyes flashing dangerously.

"What? No!" Ankh glared right back. He paused for a moment. "Okay, partly. I can't equip the OOO Driver without hurting Eiji, and I can't equip it on my own at all. If OOO is needed to dispatch a Yummy, then I need help to do it."

"This is to help Eiji," Hina said, and now she seemed less intent, less focused, more like herself.

"I want Medals, too," Ankh said, cautiously. "It's not just for Eiji."

"It's a good thing you said that," Hina said. "Or I'd think you were trying to manipulate me."

"I learned my lesson with Eiji," Ankh said, letting resignation creep into his voice. "It doesn't work on you people, crazy idealists that you are."

Hina laughed, seemingly back to her old self, but Ankh couldn't shake the image of her face, set in a cold and quiet fury that was entirely unlike the Hina he had grown to know. He was going to have to be more careful than he'd originally thought, if he wanted to make sure Hina stayed herself. He told himself it was because she was of no use to him if she grew paranoid, destructive, ambitious, and not because he wanted Hina to remain Hina for her own sake, but he knew he didn't quite believe that.

Ankh should have known things wouldn't be that easy; the detective was waiting when he pulled up in front of the Izumi apartment building with Hina on the back of the Ride Vendor. The detective's eyes narrowed in unmistakable fury when he saw the two of them, Hina clearly bruised down one arm and covered in dust that hadn't blown away during the drive.

"Upstairs. Now." The detective turned on one heel and stalked toward the door.

"Whoops," Hina muttered, sounding less tired than she had before. Ankh was inclined to agree, but if he wanted to keep Hina's cooperation, he was going to need the detective to not interfere. He sighed and followed both of them.

"How did that happen?" Izumi asked, carefully examining the bruise and then looking Hina over for any other sign of injury. There wasn't any; she'd done fairly well for her first time out.

"There was a tree," Hina said. "It's gone now."

The detective sighed, looking at his sister patiently. Ankh inched toward either the balcony or his room; they were both on the same trajectory from the front door. "Don't move," the detective said, flinging out one arm to point straight at Ankh. It would have been slightly less unnerving if he'd looked at Ankh at any point, but his gaze remained focused on Hina. "Do you want to come out and say it?" he asked. "Or am I going to have to tell you that I know?"

"I transformed into OOO," Hina said, the words tumbling over each other. "I fought a Yummy. It's gone."

"Why would you let her do that?" Now Izumi looked over at Ankh, and Ankh would have been happier if he hadn't.

"You say let," he muttered. "It's not like I could have stopped her."

"Not like." The detective paused. "You're telling me that this wasn't your idea?"

"I won't say the thought never crossed my mind," Ankh said.

"I asked," Hina said. "I asked, Shingo. Ankh can't fight the Yummies and take care of Eiji at the same time, and I couldn't stand being useless."

Not that Hina was wrong; in fact, precisely because she was right, Ankh felt a sense of inadequacy. She'd put into words what he hadn't wanted to say out loud. Whatever Eiji had done to bring him back, he was still damaged, and he could heal Eiji while healing himself, but he couldn't fight at the same time. He certainly couldn't fight as OOO.

"Why are there even Yummies to begin with? I thought they were under control," Izumi said. "Or that you at least had some measure of control over the ones you created."

Ankh grimaced, looking off to the side. It was one thing to admit that he was trying to help Eiji. He wasn't going to explain how the Foundation had altered his Yummies so that he couldn't harvest them.

"I don't think this one was Ankh's," Hina said. "Or the last one. They were both, um." She wiggled her fingers. "This one was kind of buggy, and the last one was a spider."

"Buggy," Izumi said, flatly.

"Like an insect," Hina said, a rare sharpness in her voice. "Or a spider," she added, sounding milder. "There wasn't anything bird-like about it at all."

"There was another Greeed?" Shingo said, clearly at a loss. He knew almost as much about what had happened while the Greeed had rampaged around the first time as Ankh did; he might even have had access to Ankh's memories the way Ankh had had access to his, in which case it should be very clear to him that this was not a Greeed that had been sealed.

"No," Ankh said anyway. "This is something new."

They'd seen new Greeed before, or at least Cores that didn't correspond with the five who'd been sealed away, even discounting the purple Cores. It wasn't entirely new. The fact that it had gone beyond a whole new set of Medals was what was apparently of concern to the detective.

"Is this like before?" he asked, and Ankh knew what he was referring to.

"I don't think so," Ankh said. "Spiders are living creatures." Not like the bases for the purple Cores, he didn't have to say.

"Ah."

The answer seemed to satisfy the detective, although truth be told, Ankh wasn't sure what had been the base for the new Greed; they weren't just formed of Core Medals, Cell Medals, and the wish for consciousness. They'd all been something else, once upon a time, even if he barely remembered it. He didn't think it had been something sapient, though, not something conscious like a human.

"Hina," the detective said, and Hina got a sudden cagey expression. "I don't want you to transform again," Izumi said, as if he hadn't noticed.

"Why?" Hina said.

"It's dangerous," Izumi said. "It's dangerous, and I don't want you to get hurt."

"I won't get hurt," Hina said.

"You don't know that," the detective said. "I don't know that. Ankh can't promise that."

"He's not wrong," Ankh admitted.

"You think I can't take care of myself?" Hina drew herself upwards, eyes flashing. Ankh would have hesitated before crossing her when she looked like that, were he human. "I'm stronger than both of you put together."

"I'm worried about what the effects of the Driver might be," Ankh said, before the detective could say something monumentally stupid.

"You what?" From his tone, the detective hadn't considered that aspect of it at all, for all of his knowledge about how the Driver had been created and how the Greeed had been sealed in the first place. "It didn't affect Eiji, though," he said, after a tense pause.

"So why would it affect me?" Hina asked. She'd relaxed a little, and moved to sit on one of the kitchen chairs.

"Because you want things," Ankh said. "Eiji didn't want anything." He could almost watch her train of thought as she processed both statements, and came up with a suitably chastened and wary conclusion.

"So she shouldn't touch it at all," the detective said.

"It's like you said," Ankh told him. "She just has to find something she wants more."

"You're a manipulative little asshole," the detective said, but there was no heat to his words. "I would have told you to go take a flying leap if I'd known that was why you were asking me."

"So if I remember what I really want, then the Driver won't give me trouble?" Hina asked.

"I'm not sure." The only way he was going to win this one was by laying out all his cards on the table, by being as open and honest and direct as possible. Eiji's face made it a little easier to be believed, but Ankh had to follow through with intent. "Maybe."

"Maybe isn't good enough," the detective said.

"It's my decision," Hina said. "Shingo, it's not like it happens that often. Ankh may not need my help at all. Or not much. And there's Goto." Ankh had forgotten about Goto, who'd somehow managed to miss both the initial fight with the Yummy and the phone call afterwards.

In the end, the detective came around to Ankh and Hina's way of thinking, or at least to something resembling a grumbling acquiescence. He didn't have a great deal of choice in the matter, as Ankh saw it, but his sole stipulation on not passing on the information to Goto and therefore the Kougami Foundation for as long as possible was that Hina use the Driver as little as possible.

"Wonderful," Ankh said from his position on the back of the couch when the detective finally stopped complaining. "By the way," he added. "Did I tell you we were having dinner guests?"

The ensuing mix of excitement from Hina that Ankh had actually met and gotten along with other people and frustrated resignation from Shingo regarding Ankh's lack of concern for the appropriate social niceties was a highly effective distraction, particularly given the timing of Ankh's next performance.

"Tomorrow?" The detective looked pained. "Really, Ankh?"

Ankh shrugged. "They helped you find Eiji, right?" He was fairly sure he heard the detective muttering something about possession and insolent spirit creatures, and ignored it in favor of his ringing phone. "Hello?"

The conversation with his manager turned out to be the most surreal experience Ankh had had since possessing Eiji. The absurdity of the situation was either reflected in his face or Hina was paying far too much attention to someone else's phone calls, because she was giving him an impatient and inquisitive look when he shoved the phone back in his pocket with annoyance.

"What?" he asked.

"Don't want to talk to who?" she asked.

"Eiji has a family," Ankh said, sitting down slowly. He didn't particularly care, one way or another, but he'd gotten an emotional reaction from Eiji when his manager had explained that he'd been contacted by a couple claiming to be Eiji's parents. The manager had done his due diligence and confirmed their identity, more or less, but the couple had insisted on being given contact information for their son. "He doesn't – he didn't want anything to do with them."

Hina curled up on the couch next to him, almost touching but not quite, near enough that Ankh could feel her warmth. "He didn't get along with his father, after the… the situation abroad," she said. "They brought him home and leveraged the publicity towards his father's career, Date said."

Ankh dimly remembered something along those lines; Eiji had gotten involved in a civil war, one that had been started with money donated from his family because of his naïve failure to properly read the sociopolitical climate of the region he'd wanted to help, and it had gone badly. Eiji had responded by withdrawing into himself, and then by cutting ties with his family to wander aimlessly in and out of the country from one part-time job to the next.

"What did they want?" Hina asked.

"What?"

"His family," Hina said. "They must have wanted something, or they wouldn't have called."

"That was my manager," Ankh told her. "They called the company and wanted to know where Eiji was."

"And?"

"And they're not getting anything," Ankh said, annoyed. "I'm not talking to them. They're not my problem."

"Wait, how did they even know to call a talent agency?" Hina shifted just enough that she was lightly pressed against Ankh's side. The contact was comforting, dispersing some of a sense of anxiety that Ankh hadn't realized he was feeling until it lessened.

"There are posters," he said. "Eiji's face is on them."

Hina twisted around to look at him, and her eyes widened. "I've seen those," she said.

"Everybody has seen those," Ankh muttered. "Eiji's family wants him to stop tarnishing the family reputation with low-rent performances," he added after a moment.

Hina's face went from surprised recognition to righteous indignation so quickly that Ankh almost looked behind him to see if a threat had materialized in the middle of the Izumi living room, but Hina started talking before he could do so much as twitch. "That's ridiculous," she said. "They didn't care what he was doing before, when he wasn't bringing any attention to himself. It's ridiculous that they suddenly have an opinion now."

It's human nature, Ankh wanted to say, but Hina was working herself up into a highly entertaining fit of temper, so he kept his mouth shut.

"It makes perfect sense," the detective said. Ankh hadn't thought he was paying attention. "Eiji's father was very image-conscious, as I recall. Having his son in a relatively highly visible position without the legitimacy of an established agency guaranteeing a successful career path doesn't sound like something he'd approve."

"How would you know," Hina said, but quietly.

"It's my job to know things," the detective said with the air of someone holding out an advantage over a younger sibling.

"I'm not talking to them," Ankh said, just in case anyone was getting any ideas.

"Did I hear you agree to play at that place in Roppongi?" Hina said, which was enough of a subject change to mollify Ankh. "I thought you refused the last time, because there was too much space."

Ankh smirked. "It seemed like the right time for a bigger audience."

The detective snorted, but when Ankh looked over at him, he was wearing a mix of resignation and amusement. "You're such an asshole," he said, but Ankh was fairly sure it wasn't a pejorative statement. The detective had almost sounded affectionate.

"I'm a Greeed," Ankh corrected him, and was rewarded with the detective rolling his eyes.

Having assumed that Hina had both met Philip and Shotaro and was capable of finding them in the audience, Ankh was somewhat put out at having to hunt down two separate sets of people following his set. He was annoyed enough that he didn't register someone repeating Eiji's name until he felt his shoulder being rudely grabbed in an attempt to yank him backwards.

Ankh turned, scowling at whoever thought they could touch him without his permission. He didn't know what he'd expected to see, but it wasn't a middle-aged woman dressed in clothing that was more expensive than the people who usually haunted his venues staring at him with resignation and sadness. "What?" he said. "I'm busy."

"Eiji," said the woman again.

"I don't have time for this," he said, and went back to his search for his roommate and the idiot private detectives, who should have had the sense to all be in one place where he could find them easily.

Hina wasn't that far away, but she was short enough to get buried in the crowd, and he almost missed her. "Who was that?" she asked.

"How should I know?" Ankh scanned the crowd for Hidari's ridiculous hat; he was convinced the man only wore it to add centimeters to his height. He saw it, or what he hoped was it, because if more than one person was wearing such a hideous monstrosity, Ankh was going to have to set it on fire, and started off toward it. As an afterthought, he grabbed Hina by the wrist so as not to lose her again.

"Hey," Hina protested, pulling out of his grasp while effortlessly keeping up with him. Ankh, not about to lose her in the crush of people that seemed far denser on the ground than it had from up on the stage, wasn't about to let go, and ended up holding her hand rather than her wrist.

The hat, dark red with some sort of fluffy trim, did indeed belong to Hidari. Philip was still affecting colorful clips to keep his hair pinned back, in an awful lime green that managed to clash with Hidari's hat even when they weren't standing right next to each other.

"That wasn't a prosthetic, right?" Philip said, by way of greeting, making a grab for Ankh's left hand and looking disappointed when Ankh moved it out of the way. Or perhaps his disappointment was for the hand appearing human. "That was what your arm actually looks like."

"Philip," Hidari said, in a long-suffering tone. "Good evening, Ankh, Miss Izumi. This is my companion, Philip."

Inexplicably, Hina nudged Ankh in the ribs after several seconds of extended awkward silence. He glared at her. "What was that for?"

Hina sighed. "Izumi Hina," she said to Philip. "It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Hidari."

In the space of no time at all, Hina and Hidari had somehow gone from awkward near-strangers to giving each other sympathetic looks, and Ankh wasn't sure why. He also wasn't sure he liked this instant newfound camaraderie, and stepped protectively between the two of them. Hidari gave Hina a rueful half-smile, and Philip actually managed to grab and pull Ankh's left hand toward him for closer examination.

"Gentlemen," Hina said, sounding very much like she wanted to laugh and was trying not to, "this way."

Ankh shook Philip loose, a harder task than he initially assumed, and followed Hina toward the exit.

The entire trip home was spent in attempting to deflect Philip's increasingly technical and detail-oriented questions about the Greeed; not in the process of constructing the Medals, but in how the Greeed worked in a physiological sense. More than once, Ankh looked over at Hina for what he wouldn't quite call assistance, only to find her deep in conversation with Hidari. Every single time, one or both of them was nodding sympathetically, and at least twice Ankh distinctly heard exclamations along the line of "That happens all the time! Yours does it, too?"

"Don't worry about Shotaro," Philip said, the third time Ankh twitched visibly.

"I'm not worried about Hidari," Ankh snapped, but Philip was staring past him with a fond smile that transformed his entire face, and Ankh didn't think he was listening at all. At least, if Philip was mooning over his partner, he wasn't asking Ankh questions. Unfortunately, the distraction only lasted a few seconds before Philip asked about the process creating Cell Medals and how they were stored.

The detective turned out to be just as inexplicably amused by whatever it was that had Hina determinedly not laughing. Ankh was sure that he'd said something about having to work late that night, but when they opened the door, there he was. He was not only not still at the office, he'd prepared food, which kicked off a whole new round of questioning from Philip – this time he wanted to know how possession altered the five main senses, and whether they were different from host to host, since humans had clear preferences.

"Oh," Hina said, after Ankh failed to dodge the questions with anything resembling grace. "Is that why you don't eat ice cream much anymore?"

"Ice cream?" Philip asked, and Ankh fled to the balcony.

Hidari emerged a few minutes later, and Ankh stiffened. Hidari was quiet, though, and held out a banana dipped in chocolate on a stick. Ankh snatched it out of his hand and ate it sulkily, perched on the balcony rail. Hidari was still there when he finished, quiet and unassuming in a welcome change from his usual demeanor.

"Philip can come on a little strongly," he said. "But he's a good man at heart."

"Tch," Ankh said, licking the last remnants of chocolate off the stick. "He's not a man. Not human," he clarified, at Hidari's affronted expression.

Hidari smiled. "Not entirely, no."

"Does he always ask so many questions?"

Hidari laughed out loud, the act transforming him just as thoroughly as Philip's affectionate smile. Ankh felt a pang of something he couldn't identify at Hidari's unrestrained joy, and pushed it back where it had come from. "You can tell him to stop."

"Didn't work," Ankh said.

"Sorry," Hidari said, but he didn't seem sorry at all. "It's rare for him to come across completely new information. The Gaia Library – the one in his head – has pretty much everything known to mankind, indexed and searchable, and usually when he wants to know something all he has to do is look it up."

"If you're trying to compliment me, you're terrible at it." Ankh dropped the stick over the side of the balcony.

"I'm still half-boiled," Hidari said, which made zero sense, but he followed the statement by returning inside. Ankh waited a few more minutes before following, slipping inside silently and joining the dinner conversation by not saying a word while he ate. Philip, much to Ankh's relief, stopped asking quite so many questions; Ankh noticed that he asked one every 300 seconds, like clockwork, including the follow-up questions.

"Have you tried collaborating with the Kougami Foundation?" he asked, after Philip wanted to know what a Cell Medal felt like.

"I'm interested in personal experience," Philip said earnestly.

"He's already gone through their servers," Hidari translated, and then glanced somewhat guiltily at the detective.

Izumi had his face buried in his hands. "I have heard nothing of possible legal transgressions in the course of this meal," he said. "Nothing." Hina patted her brother's shoulder.

Overall, Ankh considered the evening to be remuneration worth the information that the Kougami Foundation had been attempting to distract him from their creation of a new Greeed with the talent agency. He didn't know how – or if – he wanted to use the information, but he liked knowing he had it; better to be informed than to be in the dark.

In the meantime, he enjoyed performing enough to continue, even under dishonest pretenses, and he was still getting an appropriate amount of Cell Medals from providing the lab with regular Yummy subjects for study. In the weeks following Hidari's visit, Ankh found an odd sense of routine beginning to settle around him; performances at slightly larger and more unfamiliar venues, scheduled visits to the lab, and Hina's next few outings as OOO.

Ankh tried to keep Hina's time transformed as short as possible, allowing her to defeat each Yummy before it matured despite the lower Medal harvest. She didn't seem to be reacting poorly to use of the Driver, surrendering it to Ankh for safekeeping without protest or apparent reluctance, but he kept a close eye on her all the same. The one time he felt uneasy about the arrangement was when Hina failed to arrive quickly enough to prevent the Yummy's maturation and it molted its humanoid skin to reveal an eight-legged perversion of a hard-shelled crab.

"I don't know what you want me to do with that!" Hina said, sounding half-way hysterical as the crab unfolded itself into a two-and-a-half-meter tall monstrosity.

"Switch medals," Ankh snapped, and tossed Kujaku and Condor at her. She fumbled the catch, and the crab started to scuttle after her as she groped for the Medals. "Here!" Ankh shouted, flinging one of his Cell Medals hard enough to ping off the crab's shell. Its eyes swiveled over to him on the ends of long, long stalks, and it moved with devastating speed.

Ankh dodged, hearing cloth rip as the crab made a grab for him with its wickedly sharp claws and feeling his foot go numb as the crab just barely grazed his ankle. He heard the welcome sound of the OOO Driver singing the TaJaDor melody and scrambled to his feet.

"Fire!" he shouted, and Hina unleashed an inferno. He barely got clear in time, one trailing forearm singed pink by the heat as the crab burned with enough ferocity to melt the sidewalk. It exploded into a shower of Cell Medals, glowing slightly as they cooled, and Hina stood triumphantly over it. "You can take that off," he said, limping slightly as he walked toward the still-warm Cell Medals.

Hina turned to look at him. Ankh hadn't realized how eerie the expressionless face of the OOO armor could be until it was staring at him without moving.

"Take it off," he said, letting warning sharpen his voice.

The suit crackled and vanished, Hina pulling in a deep breath. She dropped the Driver and the Scanner, panting as though she'd run a marathon, and stumbled backwards. Ankh frowned.

"What?" he asked.

"I…" She shook her head. "I almost – I didn't – you were nearly caught in the – I nearly killed you!"

"No, you didn't." He might have argued the point on another occasion, but he knew he was quick enough that she'd actually have to try to damage him, no matter whose body he was wearing. Besides, the idea was to keep her from going off the deep end, not push her into it. "Though your aim could be better."

"What?" She glared at him indignantly, the tears that had been welling up vanishing.

"Your aim," he said. "You should have gone for the vulnerable points at the edges of its shell, or its eyes, rather than the armored back."

"Like you could do a better job," she said, which was still not quite Hina-like. It was close enough. Ankh raised an eyebrow at her.

"Eiji never had trouble catching the Medals, either," he said.

"Now that is absolutely not true," Hina said. "I caught you both practicing. More than once." Ankh smirked at her. "Fine, we'll practice." She sighed and picked up the Driver and Scanner, handing them both to him.

The last part of the short-lived routine was the most unexpected; Ankh found himself refusing to see people with unfamiliar names who refused to tell him or the people running interference what their business was. It started with phone calls from unfamiliar numbers, and progressed to people showing up at the agency office or at his performances. There were two men and one woman, all of whom were persistent and none of whom were the woman who'd accosted him the night he'd seen Hidari, and eventually he asked the detective if he could find out who they were.

The detective insisted that Ankh register a complaint before he would use public resources, but when he came back with identities, he was clearly uncomfortable.

"Ankh, these are Eiji's siblings." He put three sheets of paper down on the desk, having also insisted that Ankh come to the station to fill out paperwork in order to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. "Takaichi Kazuya. Takaichi Yasuo. Maehara Naoko."

"Eiji has siblings?" Ankh reached toward the nearest sheet of paper, but before he could reach it, he felt a sudden stab of pain in his chest. He drew in a sharp breath and rubbed at the spot, feeling it subside reluctantly.

"Are you all right?" The detective eyed him.

"Fine," he answered shortly. It seemed to be over, whatever it had been. "Can I make them stay away?" He could recognize some of the discomfort for what it was, now; Eiji had had a number of conflicting emotional reactions to his siblings, it seemed, and they were leaking through. It was the first sense of Eiji that Ankh had had since transforming to TaJaDor; he hadn't noticed when his impressions of Eiji had stopped, and it was uncomfortably reminiscent of Hina not noticing that she hadn't heard from Eiji in a month. Just to reassure himself, Ankh reached inwards, but Eiji still felt the same, still vague and barely present.

"Well," the detective was saying slowly, "you could file a restraining order, although that seems like –"

"Do it," Ankh said. "If it will keep them away from me, do it." The detective wasn't happy about it, but Ankh signed whatever paperwork the detective put in front of him, and considered the matter settled. The feeling of being in something of a holding pattern didn't abate, and he wasn't sure how effective his efforts to heal Eiji were, but he thought he could be patient for a while longer.