Chapter One
The man was Japanese, pure as his dark eyes and the heavy accent, born and raised; maybe not in Tokyo, he might have come from somewhere else originally. Still, there was no denying it. Somehow, outside of Mugenjou, in the falling dusk of afternoon, his shadow casting low on the ground, he seemed foreign.
When he stepped inside the cafe, there was the sound of that unmistakable chime. It was something Ban had grown so accustomed to he hardly flinched at the sound, not even glancing in direction unless he knew it was someone worth his time. Natsumi followed the jingle of the bell, almost trained to react to the sound, "Welcome!"
But today, for some reason, he looked up and saw the man standing there. He could still remember last he saw him. Inside Mugenjou, on that assignment to retrieve the IL. Not much had changed. Same scruffy, graying beard that might have been black or dark brown once upon a time; hard to tell. That hat pulled low over his head so only the bushy eyebrows identical in color to his beard showed. Gen. Gen the pharmacist. A pharmacist Ban had never been able to believe was only what he claimed to be.
His eyes snapped to Paul almost unconsciously. The bartender had lowered his newspaper in that slow, casual manner of his, his expression yielding nothing. Never did much, really, his dark sunglasses hiding his face too well; Ban figured the only time he saw a clear emotion on his face was when he was yelling at them to pay off their tab or to clear the hell out. But he could see something shift in his stance somehow, a slight tense of muscles, and the slow downward curve at the corner of his mouth. Paul recognized him.
Gen's eyes had traveled the room and found Ban before Natsumi could ask him if he wanted anything. She followed his gaze and held her tongue. Usually, she asked even the potential clients that came looking for them at the cafe if they wanted tea or coffee, but for some reason, something about this man restrained her. Ban leaned back in the booth he sat in, arms splaying out across its back, nonchalant and all unconcerned arrogance. Like everyday, people from Mugenjou were popping up looking for him.
"Kazuki said I would find you here," Gen said. Ban raised an eyebrow. What was that thread spool doing? He always stuck his fingers where they didn't belong.
"Yeah?" Ban echoed, reaching out to pull the ash tray on the table closer to him. He withdrew the cigarette from his lips and tapped out the ash. Gen slid into the seat across from him as he did, and Ban didn't even have to ask. He was here as a client. This wasn't some joy visit.
He glanced toward Natsumi, hovering close by. She always did, listening in on their jobs. Added a bit of a thrill in her otherwise mediocre routine, Ban guessed. Or something.
"Y'want coffee or something?" he asked, giving her at least an excuse to get closer to them without seeming like a busy-body. Gen seemed startled he'd ask. Definitely like a foreigner, Ban reaffirmed. But then, Mugenjou almost was its own separate world.
"Oh, yes, coffee. Thank you."
Natsumi shuffled away with a little twirl, bouncing to the bar while Paul prepared the order. Ban noted he took down his personal cup while he was at it, too, another small thing Ban treated like second nature. Paul always gave him free coffee when there was a potential client. When Ban asked him once, he said having a coffee in hand made him look more professional. Ginji had laughed and said with the words 'the invincible Midou Ban-sama's personal cup!' scrawled on it in messy characters, it was anything but.
"What're you doing here, old man?"
"Well," Gen began, pausing when Natsumi appeared with their coffee and nodding his thanks, "you're retrieval specialists, aren't you?"
Ban snorted. "Only the best." He lifted his cup to his lips, speaking around its rim. "Ginji's not around right now, though." His partner had gone springing merrily off with the monkey trainer and Madoka earlier that morning, to some recital she was having. Ban had opted not to go. Just shrugged the offer away and said he'd wait around the cafe in case business came by. It had been going pretty slow lately. It was enough that one of them could get a small break, he figured.
Natsumi sat down in the booth behind him, laying her arms on the backrest of the chair. She could have sat with either one of them, maybe; she would have squeezed into the booth if Ginji were there. But Ban was different. He liked Natsumi-chan, had sworn numerous times to beat the crap out of any poor bastard who dared break her heart, but there was still an unseen boundary between them. It was a boundary only Ginji dared tempt, and Ginji the only one Ban let do it. Natsumi knew better than to get too close to him.
"I can come back--" Gen began, but Ban cut him off short.
"What's the job?" Had to be something, for this guy to come all the way from Mugenjou. Especially when it seemed like it'd been a good twenty, thirty years since he'd be on the outside.
Gen was quiet for a moment. Most clients were. Sorting out their thoughts, wondering how to begin wording their request. Ban had sat across from so many people, listened to so many tales of woe, that it too had become routine to him. Second nature. Something to be accustomed to. Sometimes, he thought maybe it was time to try something new.
And every time he thought that, he thought of Ginji, and his partner's smiling face, and knew he couldn't leave this for anything.
"People are going missing in Mugenjou."
Ban cocked an eyebrow. "Missing, how?"
"Missing," Gen repeated. "Vanished. They're just gone."
"People don't go poof," Ban said automatically, and only then realized the folly of his words.
People did. In Mugenjou, people could go poof at any moment. Because in Mugenjou, not everyone was real. Some people, who in all outward appearances were normal human beings living their lives day by day in the demon's nest, were not really people at all. They were images. Holograms. Bits and pieces of data.
Gen saw that Ban realized, and his mouth tugged up in a humorless smile. "People are being deleted from the Archive."
"What the hell for?" Ban demanded. Gen shook his head.
"I don't know." He wouldn't. Things happened in Mugenjou inexplicably. No one knew why; some lived, some died, some were placed there for a greater purpose, and some were merely pieces in the jigsaw. Everything happened in accordance to the will of some puppeteer, pulling and manipulating the strings. Some person, thing, creature, whatever, that Makubex had called the god of Babylon City.
Who seemed to be deleting people just for the hell of it.
Ban watched Gen for a moment, and then knew why the man was there.
"You think computer boy and that girl are going to disappear like the rest of them."
He nodded, the bow of his head bleak and resigned. "Makubex more than Ren," he said, as though it mattered; either one, and he would be crushed. "Makubex... knows too much." Yeah. Computer kid was too smart like that. Computer kid was going to get his ass handed to him for it, too. Or computer kid was going to disappear, go poof one day, and no one would ever see him again.
"We can't go finding people who've been," he paused, considering his words, and continued, "deleted. There's nothing there to get back."
"That isn't my request. I want you to find someone outside of Mugenjou. Ichigo Hideki."
"Yeah? Who's he?"
Gen paused only for a moment, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Ban already knew he was going to get a history lesson instead of the short, clipped version. Clients liked to do that, too. Ginji was concerned with matters like that. Why they needed the help of the Get Backers, how much they valued the object they wanted retrieved. Ban would rather hear what it was, the briefest of explanations concerning its theft, and then talk cash.
"I was an architect. I helped in the design and construction of Mugenjou. Ichigo was also involved, but in a different area than myself." Another pause. "He designed the program."
"Program," Ban repeated.
"To create virtual humans. It's a software program in the central computer of the Archive. It creates humans, shapes their lives and purposes, and then at some point or another, they appear in Mugenjou."
Behind him, Ban heard Natsumi make a small sound of surprise. She had never heard any of this before. They never troubled her with it; she knew of Mugenjou, that it was where Ginji and the thread spool and monkey trainer were from, and that he still had friends there. But everything about its twisted, dark secrets, she was spared. It was too heavy of a thing for her, and Ban liked her naive as she was. Preferred her that way.
"Natsumi-chan, more coffee, huh?"
"Oh! Sure, Ban-san!" He watched her take his cup from the corner of his eye, hurrying to the counter to refill the only half finished cup, and returned his gaze lazily to Gen.
"It was originally only a test site," Gen continued, his tone softer now. "Mugenjou, I mean. For this program. For other programs. For more things than I know myself."
"To see whether it could be used outside?" Ban didn't need to confirm. Outside, relevant of a term as it was, meant the world to Gen. Because in Mugenjou, that was the world. Their own private world, slummy and a hard, despairing existence, but it was their world, and outside was a place full of confusion and uncertainty.
Gen nodded. "To plant someone, maybe. Someone of political power, some sway in the world. Mugenjou was never enough for them. They want to expand, control more."
Ban didn't ask who 'they' were. He doubted even Gen knew. 'They' might have been only 'he', the so claimed god of Babylon City, or some greater, deeper society. 'They' were merely the ones setting the board and moving the pieces. And the computer kid, that messed up little kid Ginji cared about so much, was a threat they could delete so easily.
When he opened his mouth, it was to ask why, why were they doing this, deleting people now and without reason. But how stupid a question it was. Gen wouldn't know. No one would know. No one knew or could begin to comprehend the way things moved in Mugenjou. He sure as hell wasn't aiming to try, either. Ban didn't much like headaches.
So instead his question was simple, "Why do you want this guy found?"
"He designed the program," Gen repeated. "He can stop them. Return people who have been removed from the system. Put a lock on the program. Something."
Ban stubbed out his cigarette and reached for another. He could ask the computer boy to do it, hack into the system and take control of the program. Hell, maybe even the old man could do it himself, or that little girl that lived with him. But it wasn't about whether they could or couldn't. It was because they could be deleted. Removed from the system. Even Gen, real and breathing as he was, outside of Mugenjou and in, could be disposed of.
Natsumi came back with the coffee, and when she sat down his cup and made a move to sit down again in the chair behind him, hesitating a moment as though asking for his permission, he waved her on. She sat, quiet and concerned, and made no sound.
"Where can I find this Ichigo?" It was the last question.
"I don't know." Apparently the hardest to answer, too.
"S'not a very good lead, old man," Ban said, tone dry.
Gen shook his head. "They must have done something. Gotten rid of him, forced him to leave Mugenjou."
"You sure he isn't dead?" Seemed more likely. Someone like that, someone so smart as to create that kind of a program, and for some organization or person so twisted as to use it, had to be valuable. That was no mediocre technology the guy had come up with. Seemed strange, somehow, for the god of Babylon or whatever to let him go so easily.
"I'm not sure," Gen answered, voice soft and reluctantly resigned, "but I don't think they would. I think they let him go, not without threats on his life and his family, but they still let him go."
Maybe. A long shot, but a long shot this guy was willing to bet on.
It was going to be hard. With as little information as that, running on some wild goose chase in search of some man who could be dead for all he knew, all to save the lives of people who never really had lives. But Ginji wouldn't see it that way. To Ginji, it didn't matter if they were chips in a computer, a piece of software ran from some mother machine in the center of Babylon City. They were his friends. They were people he had once known, sworn to protect, and still felt an undying obligation to. Ban couldn't damn well say no and look his partner straight in the eyes again.
"All right," he said. "Consider us hired."
