A/N: Excuse me, it's been pointed out that I left something INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT out of the last chapter. That is, that the gem, while in their possession… is no longer intact. Rejoining the broken pieces of the gem should switch the personalities back to normal, emphasis on the should. Again, that should have been in the last chapter, but when I did a tweak of the last part apparently that got lost in cyberspace. Again, my apologies. I now return you to your normally scheduled fic in progress.
Ginji looked down at Akabane's shoes and rubbed one on the back of his leg, trying to get the dust off. He was feeling more than a bit apprehensive about having the real Akabane behind him. Ban grunted slightly, his hands curled around the steering wheel of his bug. At least HEVN had stopped suggesting that a sing-along might lighten the somber mood in the car.
"I wonder what Makubex's last warning to us was supposed to be," Ban mused out loud, breaking through the awkward silence that had begun after having to hear Akabane sing a round of "If you're happy and you know it" with his own special brand of humor inserted into it. Ban wondered if Ginji would ever be able to hear that song again without crying.
"I hope it's not something like 'this gem will kill you immediately upon use if you don't say the magic word three times before rejoining the shattered pieces."
Ginji shifted his weight in his seat, trying to keep how bony Akabane's butt was from making his trip uncomfortable. "Natsumi-chan and Master said they'd try to get through to Makubex again and text my cell phone when they know what he wanted to tell us," Ginji said as happily as his worn out body would allow, waving Akabane's cell phone in the air.
"That's not your phone," Akabane promptly pointed out. "Miss Manager has your cell phone."
Ginji's face fell. "This is too confusing. I want my own body back…" Ginji whined.
The lady bug chugged up next to Himiko's waiting motorcar. Himiko held up the pieces of the gem, a slight smile playing across her borrowed lips. "I'm about ready to get back into my own body," she sighed, almost as worn out as Ginji despite not having as many dangerous experiences with her borrowed body.
HEVN, being the best at organizing, shuffled everyone back into the relative positions they had been standing in when the gem had shattered. "Do you think there will be another resulting explosion? I know that's why we came out here, to prevent blowing up any more buildings, but…"
"It's better to be safe than sorry."
"The explosion is probably what Makubex was trying to warn us about," Ban added, nodding HEVN's head slightly. He was going to miss those lovely boobs, but he wasn't going to miss the pain in his back they caused. HEVN's body was a nice place to visit, but he certainly wouldn't want to live there.
Himiko held up the pieces of the gem, which glittered in her hands as though in anticipation of being rejoined together. She took a deep breath. It isn't easy to want to do something when you know the end result will be an explosion that will throw you a good couple of feet and knock you unconscious, but there were more reasons to get back to their own bodies than there were reasons not to.
"Here it goes," she proclaimed, rejoining the pieces. As the resulting flash illuminated the forms of the little group gathered below, Ginji hear his cell phone ringing in the pocket of his pants as his consciousness faded into blackness. The warning call had arrived ten seconds too late.
Once again, Ginji was the first of the group to awaken from having been blasted and thrown across the clearing. After a moment of fuzziness, his eyes cleared up. A bird was singing overhead. Ginji slowly pulled himself into a seated position. The trees around didn't look like they'd been touched at all, but there was definitely the smell of something having been burned to a crisp floating on the air. A thin layer of ashes coated the grass he was sitting in. So there hadn't been an explosion, per se, but something had been burned in the resulting flash of brilliant light.
He reached up and touched his face and head, feeling short and rough spiked hair instead of Akabane's fine, long hair. He knew that hair, as he'd washed it enough. It was his own hair. Ginji's eyes began to cloud up with tears. He was in his own body! He was home, he was home!
A breath of wind danced across Ginji's chest and he shivered. "Boy, it's cold out," he muttered to himself, rubbing his shoulders. Wait a second… hadn't he been wearing a shirt when they'd come up there? Wait a second… hadn't been wearing… pants, too?
Ginji screamed to wake the dead and dived into a bush. So THAT'S what had burned up! "Baaaaan-chan!" he whimpered, terrified if what should happen if Akabane-san found him in that condition before Ban-chan woke up. A female scream from across the clearing, one that sounded like it came from Himiko, told him that he probably wasn't the only one awakening to find what the resulting explosion had done.
Ginji reached out from the bush he was hiding in and snatched up his cell phone, lying miraculously untouched by the effects of the gem in the grass. Great! He could call Paul and ask him to bring extra clothes. Sure, Paul would laugh until his ribs hurt when he heard what had happened, but he'd at least be able to…
"Not in serviceable area" the phone said in dull, blocky text.
"NOT IN SERVICEABLE AREA?" Ginji screamed at the phone, shaking it angrily. "I just heard you ring! I just heard you ring!"
"Ginji?" he heard Ban's sleepy voice say. "Are we in our own bodies?" Ban was just beginning to come to, hands twitching. Without warning, he suddenly sat up.
Ginji's face turned white. "Ba-ban-chan… we're friends… bestest friends… but… I don't think… I want to know you… that well."
Ban looked down and let out a similar shriek, his hands clamping down over his man parts. "WHERE THE HELL ARE MY CLOTHES?"
"Smell that burning in the air?" Ginji asked timidly.
It took a moment for Ban to calm down enough to put the two together. For reasons no one will ever be able to explain, his glasses had survived the resulting clothes burning. "Well, at least the phone is okay. You can call Paul and-"
"It says it's not in a serviceable area…"
Ban's face reverted back to poorly drawn shock mode. "You- you're kidding, right?"
Ginji weakly held up the phone for Ban to see. He snatched it away from Ginji and began stomping around in the clearing. "Come on, pick up reception! Pick up reception you expensive piece of something that came out of a dog's butt!"
"Ba-ban-chan…"
"WHAT?" Ban shouted angrily, spinning around to stare at Ginji.
"We're… not… the only ones awake…"
Ban froze, realizing the implications of Ginji's words. Slowly, exorcist-style, his head cranked around on his neck.
Her body safely hidden behind a tree, Himiko's hands were clamped over her incredibly red face. "I saw- I saw it. All those years living with him and my brother, and I never..."
Ban stammered. "No-now, Himiko, let's just be adults about this…"
"It was so… so… tiny," she threw in, looking up with a grin that let him know that she wasn't the least bit actually embarrassed by Ban's… um… bare ass.
"That's not funny!" Ban shouted, completely forgetting that more than the three of them existed and pointing an angry finger at Himiko. "If you weren't naked, I'd come over there and…"
"And what? Beat her for telling the truth?" Shido asked, sitting with his hands in his own lap.
"Can't we do anything without fighting?" Kazuki asked in resignation, using his hair as a shield for himself. Hey, at least he had something, compared to the others.
"I think it's cute, Ban-chan," HEVN laughed, using Akabane as her personal shield. Akabane, for his part, was sitting with his sword in his lap, which actually worked quite nicely as a cover… but we won't go there with Freudian symbolism, shall we? "When did you get a tattoo there?"
"And who is Takara?" Akabane threw in, unable to resist a good roast when there was one going on.
"Shut up! Shut up! All of you!" Ban fumed angrily, running and hiding in a bush similar to Ginji.
"Look, we can't just all sit around talking about Ban's butt tattoo and its size or placement. Someone is going to have to go for help, probably by finding a place our cell phones can pick up reception."
"How about you guys hand over the gem and save us the trouble of having to take it from you?" a deep voice suddenly boomed. The rag-tag group all looked up to find themselves staring down the barrels of several guns held by men in dark suits. "Maybe leaving your naked corpses here will make this look like some kind of bizarre cult murder and take the pressure off us, and save you guys the humiliation of having to be found alive like that. I mean, we can obviously see you don't have any weapons."
Ginji's hand was curled in a fist. "Ban-chan, we can take them," he whispered.
"But that would mean fighting naked!" Ban whispered back, hissing in anger at the suggestion.
"Is that better than dying naked?" Kazuki asked, holding his bells, which had also survived the burning by some miracle.
"What's the matter, snake-boy? Afraid you can't do it?" Shido whispered, looking overly confident.
"I can do anything naked that I can do clothed!" Ban whisper-snapped back.
"Naked or clothed doesn't matter to me, as long as I can have fun," Akabane shrugged.
Ginji stared at Akabane, making sure to ONLY look at his face. "You're scary, Akabane-san, and I'm not really sure I wanted to hear that…"
"I'd be up for joining you, but without a belt to hold my poisons, it would be a real hassle. HEVN and I will guard the gem," Himiko said, indicating that under no circumstances, even with her life at risk, would she be willing to run naked into a battle with a group of men. HEVN, sitting beside Himiko, nodded in equal agreement.
"Hurry up, we haven't got all day and we don't' want your blood on the gem. Toss it over!" the man in the suit snarled.
Ban sighed and pushed up his glasses. "They're wearing dark glasses so I can't just use my power on them. Looks like we're going to have to fight, whether we're clothed or not."
"Perhaps dressed to kill or not would have been more humorous," Akabane suggested.
"Shut up, Jackal. If they want a naked fight, then they've got one!" Ban shouted, leading the attack.
---
I know, I know, bad place to leave off, but I'm not in the mood to write a fight at the moment.
I DARE someone to fan art the fight. I triple dog dare you!