"What happened?" the driver asked, turning around as best she could while still keeping the car on the road. She'd heard the dull thud of something heavy being dropped against the soft interior of the car.
"I don't know!" answered one of the other girls, shaking AkaGinji's shoulder slightly. "He looked at our rock climbing equipment and passed out. What should we do?"
"We should take him to the hospital," one of the two redheads said thoughtfully, "but what if he doesn't have health insurance?"
The purple-haired driver, frowned and held tightly onto the wheel. "So what do we do? We've got a stranger passed out in my car. I can't take him home with me, my parents would kill me."
"We'll take him to our apartment," the redhead answered thoughtfully.
"Hey, I don't want a strange man in our place," the final girl yet to speak threw in angrily.
The young driver dug her fingers into the steering wheel. "So, what do we do with him?"
After much discussion, the three girls decided there was only one thing they could do with the stranger without getting themselves in trouble with either the law or their parents: dump the guy in the park and flee.
Ginji opened Akabane's dark purple eyes when the first few drops of rain began touching his angular cheek bones. "Where- where am I?" he asked, slowly sitting up. His head hurt, like he'd been struck with a blunt object to the back of the skull.
A gasp escaped him. "Those girls! I bet they've stolen Akabane-san's kidneys! Wait… aren't I supposed to wake up in a bath of ice for that? Maybe they did it wrong." He started poking Akabane's sides, completely and totally unsure where the kidneys would be located. "Kidneys, are you in there?" he asked, curiously looking down at Akabane's slender frame. "You'd better be. Akabane-san will kill me if I lost one of his kidneys."
Ginji stood up and shivered, using Akabane's hands to rub his arms in a futile attempt to warm up. He'd never realized how thin the coat truly was until it became soaked and clung to him as he ran from the rain.
It began coming down heavier and heavier, until it became so thick that all he could see was a steady stream of white and gray. "It's like being trapped in a waterfall," he sputtered to himself as he sloshed through the park. His borrowed left foot hit a patch of mud and he slid, falling down and throwing mud all over himself. "Akabane-san will kill me if I survive this," Ginji moaned, dragging himself out of the mud and continuing to run for shelter. Of course, not that he had any idea where a shelter would be, having never been to that particular park in his life.
The previously injured ankle made itself known again, throbbing as he shambled through the rain. Ahead of him, he saw the dark outlines of some sort of building. At least something is going right, Ginji thought happily as he ran for the building.
It took two or three tries but he finally managed to get a single pathetic looking scalpel to come out of his hand and hacked off the hard metal bold lock protecting the gray stone building from intruders. Ginji said a silent apology to the door and then entered the saving dryness within.
It wasn't very warm, and the way his wet clothes clung to hid body made it as though he were still standing out in the rain anyway. Ginji rooted around, turning over dried leaves and twigs with his hands. Too bad he didn't know how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. Why in heck would Akabane have cigarettes but not a lighter in his pockets, anyway?
Tools hung on the walls of the small single room; he must have found his way into the park maintenance shed. Ginji curled his knees up to his chest, trying to stop shivering if only for a few precious moments. The cold had pushed straight through him, making him feel sickly. Before he really had any concept of what was happening, he vomited.
"Great, now I'm going to have to smell that," Ginji groaned, shooting over to the other side of the small shed and staring out into the rain. "Ban-chan, please come save me," he begged into the empty air.
Back at the Honky Tonk, Himiko in Shido frowned. "We've looked everywhere. AkaGinji is simply no where to be found."
"You don't think something bad happened to him, do you?" HEVN asked, her worry making Ginji's brown eyes sharp and fearful.
The laptop suddenly lit up, the ghostly form of that which both was and wasn't Makubex looking back at them. "I've found the gem Lady Poison was carrying," he said, his voice crackling with static. "It's a gem that supposedly has the mythical ability to turn kings into weak men and idiots to genius."
"And we're probably the only living people who know the myth is true," Kazuki in Himiko muttered, stirring a fruit drink with the miniature umbrella that had come in it.
"That's not all I found out. The intended delivery point of this gem after it left Japan was the United Nations."
"What?" Shido in Kazuki asked. "Why would it go there?"
"No. It was a few rouge extremist members who wanted the gem. According to the secret emails I managed to hack from them, their plan was to use the gem's ability to switch all the world's leaders' minds with minds sympathetic to their causes."
"With a plan like that, they could rule the entire world! Who would do such a thing?"
Makubex's image fluttered. "I wasn't able to find out before their security systems detected my presence. The program is still after me now. Don't' worry; it has no idea what I'm capable of, but I still have to go shortly. You have to go to the site of the explosion and retrieve the gem. If someone hasn't taken it from the site, it should still be there. Then you have to get everyone into the same positions they were in and strike the gem again to reverse the effects. However, I need to warm you that-" the image went blank, Makubex having fled back into the ether that was cyberspace.
"Wait, what do we need to be warned of?" Ban screamed, shaking the laptop so hard that with each shake of the machine, HEVN's breasts heaved.
"Shido, Kazuki, and I will go retrieve the gem. Jackal, Ban, HEVN, you guys have to go find Ginji. If I don't get back into my own body soon, I'm going to go insane."
"I don't want to work with him!" Ban snarled, pointing at Jackal, who smiled back and Ban. "Stop that, you're making my face creepy," Ban snapped at him.
"Stop fighting, Ban, and just go. I have a feeling time isn't on our side in this situation."
"What do you mean, Himiko?" Kazuki asked, feeling odd to be asking her a question when he was actually her.
"I mean that according to the myths about the crystal, there's a time limit on how long we have to return to our own bodies. Otherwise we'll be stuck like this until we die. Call my cell phone the second you find Ginji; Kazuki is carrying it." With that, the three were out the door.
"We don't even have any idea where to start looking," HEVN sighed. "Ginji just up and vanished on us."
Right at that moment, the front door opened and a wet and sheepish looking AkaGinji entered, followed by two raincoat clad policemen. "Hello, sirs. Did you happen to lose this?" one of the police officers said, referring to the dripping Ginji. "We found him breaking into a park tool shed and he promised that you guys could vouch for him not being a vagrant."
Ginji said nothing but Akabane's cheeks were bright red, his hair hanging in wet tangles down onto his soaked coat. Akabane in Ban frowned, disliking the way his body had been treated by the illustrious Ginji-kun.
"Yes, we'll claim credit for him, but only reluctantly," Ban snarled, turning his borrowed face angrily away from the humiliated Ginji.
The police officer holding AkaGinji's shoulder released it. "Okay, we'll let you off with a warning this time because it really was pouring rain, but you'd better believe we're only doing this because we're nice guys."
"Thank-thank you, officer sir," Ginji muttered. When the door shut, the four regarded one another. A long pause endured, in which only the sound of Paul's hooka-like coffee maker and the water dripping of Akabane's long black coat could be heard. Ginji kept his eyes to the floor, not wanting to face Ban's wrath.
Akabane spoke first. "I see you've been taking terrible care of my body, Ginji-kun. I should be offended. Yes… I should be."
Ginji twisted into tare-Akabane form, waving short and stubbly arms at the real Akabane. "Please don't be! I didn't mean to! It was raining!"
Ban in HEVN smashed tare-Akabane on the head. "You idiot! I've been so worried about you! I thought maybe I'd never see you again! How could you do this to me, your friend?"
"Ba-ban-chan?" Ginji asked nervously, having never heard Ban sound so… hysterical… in his life.
"You didn't even think about me! What kind of friend are you?" Ban asked, HEVN's body breaking into big tears.
"What the…"
"It's that time of the month," HEVN in Ginji said dryly. "And for once, I'm not the one having to suffer through it.
"Shut up," Ban sniffled, feeling the humiliation burn in his cheeks. He didn't care if HEVN's body was making him do it; he was Midou Ban. He didn't cry like a spanked baby in public, no matter what.
"I suggest we call Lady Poison," Akabane interjected. "I'd prefer to get my own body back so I can begin repairing the damage Ginji-kun's carelessness has done to me."
Ban looked at him. "You want your own body back? What about the Jagan, the ultimate power? I would have thought a power hungry bastard like you would want to keep my body."
"Ba-ban-chan… this is a bad idea. You don't want him to want to keep your body, do you?"
Jackal smirked through Ban's thin pink lips. "I thought I would have fun with the Jagan, but that's just it. It's like a child's toy compared to the things I can do. Being in your body only reaffirms my belief that one day I will beat you, and take your life with my own hands. I'll take the life from this body whose blood is currently mine."
"My power is not a child's toy!" Ban roared back. Akabane failed to react to Ban's anger with anything beyond his usual cold smile.
"Truthfully, I miss my weapons. The smooth feel of ceramic sliding against the skin of my enemy, splashing blood on their face, the coldness that comes over their eyes when their souls slip out of worthless flesh shells."
"This isn't open mike night at the Gothic Poetry Barn," Ban snorted, angry at not getting a rise out of Akabane.
HEVN, meanwhile, had done what had been suggested by Akabane in the first place and called Himiko. She looked over, Ban and Ginji's shared phone nestled at her ear. "She wants to meet us up in the mountains, where the force of the explosion won't destroy any more property. They have the gem."
"Good," Ban said, standing up and stretching. "Now let's just get back into our own bodies, and hopefully nothing more exciting will happen until then."
Kazuki looked over at Himiko as she quietly hung up the phone. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong is that someone did hire me to deliver this gem. By now, they've got to have realized that something must have gone wrong, and it's not on its way to them. They're going to start looking for it."
"Let's hope they don't find it before we can get back to our old selves," Shido grunted.
"We can't let them get it, even then. They'd only use it to carry out their original plans for it," Kazuki answered, slightly miffed by Shido's "if it doesn't directly affect me, I don't care about it," innuendo.
"We'll have to put it in a place they'll never find it," Himiko said with resolution, leading the group towards the arranged meeting place.
A pair of trained binoculars followed the little three some back to the borrowed car they'd taken, as Himiko's motorcycle hadn't been large enough to fit two extra passengers on it even with the sidecar.
"I have the deliver in site, and she does have the gem."
"She must have decided to double cross us and sell it for the profit."
The man holding the binoculars lowered them, fingering a sleek black riffle. "Should I eliminate her and the witnesses?"
"Follow her, and when you're in a place where there's no one around, end them."
Down below, Himiko was thinking about how good it was that they'd chosen not to meet in a populated place in case the second explosion was anything like the first. A possible assassination was the furthest thing from her, or anyone's, minds as they converged on the meeting place.