Paul stared at the gathered crowd. "This is interesting," he commented dryly as he inserted a silver key into the front lock of the small coffee shop. "Everyone except Ban and Ginji is here this morning."
"What are you talking about?" cried Ban, who for all intents and purposes was HEVN to Paul. "I'm standing right here, and Ginji's right there," he snapped, pointing to tare-Jackal bobbling on top of Himiko's head.
Paul's eyebrow twitched involuntarily behind his dark glasses. "Riiiight."
Himiko stepped forward in Shido's body quickly, sensing the tension in the air rising like a storm front. "Eer… sir," she said, uncertain if she should call him "Paul" or "Master". "We seem to have traded bodies. The Jackal and HEVN that you see are actually Ban and Ginji."
Paul continued to stare at them, the uncovered parts of his face reflecting disbelief and confusion. "April Fool's day is first off an American holiday, and secondly this isn't April."
"We're not kidding. Some magical gem thing that I was transporting shattered, and there was this burst of light followed by an explosion."
"And when we woke up," Kazuki jumped in, continuing the story. "We were all in the wrong bodies. We came here because we didn't really know where else to go."
"We need to contact Makubex. He'll know what to do," Shido added.
Paul looked back and forth, studying the faces of the members of the group as if to decide if what he was witnessing really was some kind of prank or not. His shaded eyes came to rest on the tare-Akabane, bobbling up and down on top of Himiko's head. "It's only because of that thing that I'm willing to believe you guys. If this turns out to be a prank, I'm doubling Ban and Ginji's tab."
"Maaaaaaster, so mean!" Ginji whined, turning into a gelatin mess and more or less slopping off of Himiko's shoulders. Kazuki, in Himiko's body still, reached down and picked Ginji up by the nape of Akabane's neck and carried him into the Honky Tonk.
The screen of the laptop glowed blue, reaching deep into the reaches of cyberspace where Makubex had taken up residence. He looked up, his eyes paler and more distant than they would seem if they were really face to face with his form. He, as with Paul, was originally convinced that he was the victim of a prank, but was eventually brought around as well.
"I'll see what I can find." He glanced at the screen and turned his head towards Himiko in Shido's body, causing her to start. It wasn't a two way screen; he shouldn't have been able to do that. Then again, Makubex wasn't exactly… a normal piece of equipment. "Himiko-san, I know this is probably a violation of your codes, but I need to know the name of your client so I can research that gem."
Himiko looked back and forth, Shido's tiny eyes glancing over the assembled group. "It… is… against my code of conduct as a transporter. I swear never to give up the information or confidentiality as a client."
The screen flickered for a second as Makubex smiled deviously at her. "The client didn't reveal the full dangers of the object he was having you transport. Doesn't that violate the transporters contract?"
"I suppose it does…"
"This nullifies the contract."
Himiko sighed, resigned to the fact that if she ever wanted to be herself again, she was going to have to break her professional vows. There was no second way around it.
Shido's fingers were clumsy and hard to type with, but she eventually managed to use the laptop to provide the required information. The others, being strangely polite of her request to violate her terms of service in privacy, had taken to milling about the bar. As she looked up from the screen, a feeling of dread stabbed into Shido's heart.
"Guys… does it disturb you that the only two people who aren't here physically are Ban and Ginji, and the only two people who aren't here mentally are Jackal and the mediator?"
There was a momentary pause while the other attendees of the Honky Tonk took a moment to break from their milling and let the implications of the statement sink in.
"Let's pray…" Ginji said slowly, "that HEVN-san has my body."
"I'll second that," Shido said. "A nice woman like that doesn't belong in a stinking body like this."
"You take that back, monkey bastard!" Ban snarled, curling HEVN's hands into claws. "I've got some nasty fake nails I'd love to drag across your face!"
"Don't you dare, Ban! That's my face!" Kazuki snapped.
"GUYS! I'm not worried about Ban's bathing habits or lack thereof! I'm worried about the possibility of JACKAL possessing the JYAGAN," Himiko screamed with Shido's lungs.
Another moment passed in which one could have heard the dropping of a pin, or the sound of blood rushing through arteries. Ginji, in Akabane's body, toppled over and took out a chair in the process. "A…a…a…kabana-san with the jya…jyagan," he stammered fearfully, not even wanting to contemplate the full implications of that statement.
"Is HEVN having it any more of an improvement?" Ban asked angrily. "She'd probably use it to rob a jewelry store and I'd take the blame for it, and that would still leave Jackal able to electrocute us for fun and profit. At least the Jyagan has limits to how it can be used."
Above everyone's heads, a mental image of chibi-Ginji running around, randomly shocking people with electricity and crying "wheee, now you're dead!" appeared. A collective shudder passed through the group all at once.
"We should spread out and find those two. We probably need them to reverse the effects of whatever happened to us at any rate. Ban and Ginji, you know this area well, search around here. Kazuki and I will go back to Jackal's apartment and look for clues to his location around there. Shido, make a few phone calls and find out if they've managed to land themselves in jail yet," Himiko ordered neatly, assigning each person a task. Ban was going to complain about Himiko making herself sudden leader, but the others obediently dissipated to do what she'd assigned them to do before she could.
"This is stupid," Ban snarled to Ginji. "I mean, if they were in this area, they'd have already come to the Honky Tonk, wouldn't they?"
"Maybe they're in the area but didn't think of it," Ginji said hopefully. "Oh, found a yen! That's good luck!"
"Ginji, every time you say something like that, something horrible happens."
"Come on, Ban-chan, have a little faith in caramel!"
"That's karma," Ban corrected, a bit irritated. "I would if you didn't happen to just naturally seem talented at attracting horrible circumstances."
A whistle sounded behind them. "Hey, cute girlies, what are pretty chicks doing in a place like this?"
Ban sighed as HEVN's shoulders sagged. "Case in point."
The hairy-chested thug threw his arm around Ban, dragging HEVN's body up so tightly to him that her breasts crushed against his ribs. Frankly, it hurt, and Ban wasn't at all happy with it. "Put me down, you gorilla!"
The thug tightened his grip on HEVN's arm. "I like a chick with attitude!" he laughed, grinning to show a set of rotted teeth.
A skinny punk with a shaved head came up behind Ginji, who was standing there sweating nervous bullets as he watched Ban argue with the man-ape. "Hey, there, cuteness!" the bald guy grinned, reaching over Ginji's shoulder and thrusting his hand down the front of Akabane's shirt. After a moment, a look of confusion came over his face and he shoved Ginji hard. Ginji felt Akabane's ribs impacting a fire escape with great speed, and a gasp of pain escaped him. This was bad, really bad. Maybe if he knew how to use Akabane's powers, he could do something, but he didn't.
"The chick's a DUDE!" the punk laughed.
"Leave him alone!" Ban snapped, trying to break free of the gorilla. The gorilla laughed, sounding like a car backfiring more than a human being.
"Why do you beautiful chicks always insist on hanging out with skinny gay guys?" he asked. "Real men not good enough for you?"
"Take your hands off me or you'll regret it!"
The gorilla laughed even harder. "What are you going to do? Cute me to death?"
"No, I'll do this!" Ban cried, grabbing an electric cattle prod out from between HEVN's massive breasts and jabbing it into the gorilla's neck. He let out and eep of surprise and fell down, shaking slightly. Ban whipped around, HEVN's hair flying behind him, and faced the bald punk. "Attack!" he shouted, lunging at the punk.
The punk held up his hands to ward off the attack, but Ban managed to jab the prod right into his neck… only for nothing to happen. "Eh?" asked Ban, staring at the prod. "Low Battery" flashed in brilliant characters on the back.
The gorilla snarled, getting up. "You're going to pay for that, girl."
Ban looked back and forth, a giant sweat drop forming on his head. "GINJI, RUN!" he finally shouted.
The two took off like rockets, the street thugs hot on their heels. Ban crossed his hands frantically over HEVN's chest. "How can she run with all the bouncing?" he screamed to where Ginji should be. "Eh, Ginji? GINJI?" he asked, realizing that no one was running with him.
"GINJI!" he cried, whirling around and expecting the thugs to be torturing his best friend. Ginji wasn't there, either, but he had just allowed the thugs to get all that much closer to him. Sweating, he took off as fast as he could, trying to ignore the jiggling that was making getting a decent run going not only difficult, but comedic.
The thugs were gaining on him, growing closer and closer. He could feel their dirty fingers brush against the back of HEVN's hair. He raced left around a corner, then right. A few more feet and he could get away…
Or he could run straight into a dead end. Ban swore in a definitely most un-feminine way and tried to scramble up the side of the brick wall, which resulted only in him breaking off a set of fake fingernails and falling flat on HEVN's shapely rear.
The thug and the punk laughed, turning the corner. "You're out of luck, girlie. Now we're going to show you what it feels like to play with a real ma-"
A flower pot flew out of nowhere and pegged the bald punk on the back of the head. "Gerk," he moaned, falling over.
"What in the seven hells?" The gorilla asked, whirling around to take another potted plant square in the face. Unlike his companion who had crumpled with a single hit, he batted the remains of the ceramic pot away. "Okay, you wanna-be-heros! Show yourselves so I can wipe my butt with your hides!"
"Pi-ka-chu thundershock!" a strangely familiar voice shouted. A second later a blue streak of electricity shot down on the gorilla's head. He coughed out a small plume of black smoke, and then collapsed over on top of his buddy. His buddy's body made a sound like it had the consistency of a jelly donut as squished beneath the gorilla.
"What the…?" Ban asked, echoing the gorilla's confusion.
"Yatta! I did it!" HEVN cried, her voice still slightly drunkenly slurred. "Yatta, yatta!" She bounced up and down in Ginji's body, toppling over when she landed wrong and giggling from the effects of the booze still running through her body.
"Told you it would work," Akabane commented, flopping down next to her in Ban's body.
"Okay, okay, you're right. You do have to yell out the name of your attacks for them to work."
Ban looked back and forth between the two of them. "Let me guess, HEVN and Jackal. Unfortunately I can't tell which one of you is which at the moment, but I can smell the sake from here. What have you two done to my and Ginji's bodies?" he snorted, practically wanting to punch himself in the face.
"We went out drinking and had hot sex!" the one in Ginji's body chirped happily.
Five minutes of silence later… "YOU WHAT?!" Ban shrieked, turning into a glowing-eyed fang toothed version of HEVN.
"I was kidding…" HEVN stammered, trembling as she hid Ginji behind Ban's body. "I never know I could be that scary…"
"You shouldn't kid about stuff like that! What are you, some kind of sick hentai fangirl?"
"I thought it was funny," HEVN meagerly sniffled, sounding strangely like Ginji did when he was in trouble. Maybe having Ginji's starved brain was beginning to work on HEVN's psyche. "I see my body… where's Akabane-san's body?"
HEVN saw her own face suddenly fall as realization dawned over Ban. "That's… a very good question," he said slowly.
Ginji, meanwhile, had accidentally managed to activate Akabane's "run very fast" power, and was currently a good three miles away from where Ban was running from the thugs. "Oh, poop," was all Ginji could say when he realized what had happened. Not only that, but he had no clue where he was.
"Ban-chan's in trouble, I'm trapped in Akabane-san's body, and I'm lost!" Ginji whined, flailing Akabane's arms. "Could this situation get any worse?"
A long, sleek black car pulled up behind him, the window lowering. "Hello there. Do you need a lift?" a purple-haired girl with dark glasses on asked, smiling generously at him.
Ginji grinned broadly. "I need to go to the Honky Tonk. Here's the address. Thank you so much!" he cried brightly, jumping into the back seat of the car between two red haired girls in similarly dark glasses. "And to think, Ban-chan says there aren't any good Samaritans in the world anymore! You guys are real life savers!"
The girls just grinned in response. Ginji leaned back in the seat with a happy sigh. "Yep, I'm so glad you two came along or I would have been in real trouble… hey, why are there ropes and duct tape… behind… the back… seat… Crud."
A/N: I don't usually update so quickly, but I wrote this and the previous chapter together. Gee, even I feel kind of bad for Ginji now… The jelly donut thing is TM my roommate, after watching episode 2 of 100 stories.