Hi! I'm sorry if it took so long… I've been busy.
Well, thanks to all those who reviewed! Your support has really kept me going. Every time I read those reviews of yours, I always feel so happy with myself. You guys really make my day!
And now, here is the final chapter of Running From The Past!
Enjoy!
The two opponents circled each other, wary of the other's moves, not wanting to give the other a chance to strike. Natsumi's weapons of choice were two katanas, while her former boss' weapon was a long sword. Then they suddenly stopped and positioned themselves into a battle stance, as though waiting for something to happen. Ban, who was nonchalantly smoking cigarette, realized that they were both waiting for something to start the match. He walked to the middle of the two fighters and simply said, "When the cigarette falls down." And he threw the cigarette up into the air.
Although in reality it was only a few seconds, to those who were watching it fall, it seemed like an eternity. After what seemed forever, the cigarette fell on the ground, and everyone averted their eyes to the two adversaries before them.
They both pounced on each other, then disappeared, despite the glow of the flickering lights. It took them a few seconds to realize that this was because they were both moving to fast for the naked eye to see. Kazuki watched, thinking to himself, "I never knew Natsumi could do this… She was always so gentle…"
All they could hear where the sounds of swords clashing and clanging onto each other and feet moving lightly on the ground.
As they fought, Hevn whispered in a hushed and worried voice. "Look at that… that's amazing. Do you really think she can do it? I'm really worried. I mean what if she doesn't win!"
Ginji replied firmly, "I have faith in her. She can do it."
"I just hope your right Ginji, for all our sakes," muttered Ban quietly.
After a long while, they both separated from each other, panting and gasping for breath. Beads of sweat could be seen falling from their hair. So far, no one was bleeding.
Yet.
"You're better than I thought you would be." He said, smiling amusedly. "I always like a challenge."
"Good for you." Natsumi replied tersely.
He began to circle her, as though she were some lab experiment he was studying. "You're technique deals with the element of wind, am I correct?" he asked, as though they were just trading jokes and telling stories, as though they were the best of friends, not enemies who were trying to kill one another.
Natsumi began to pace around him too. Not sure of what he was planning to do, she answered him hesitatingly, "Yes."
He nodded in a good natured way, as though he was pleased with her answer. "Well, I also deal with an element when it comes to fighting. Care to know what it is?" he asked, encouraging her to ask. A trace of a smirk could be seen on his on his features.
"What does he mean? I've never heard of him controlling an element… then again, he's very secretive about his fighting style. No one's really seen him fight. After all, he has people to do the dirty work for him…" she thought, laughing inside at the last sentence of her thought. "I was one of those people…"
She glanced at Ryuki, just in case he knew anything about it. He shrugged his shoulders, also puzzled. "Well that's something. Ryuki's good at getting information, so if he doesn't know anything about it, it must really be a secret…"
She turned back to her opponent. She decided to indulge him. "Yes, I would care to know exactly what you control." She was not sure what exactly his scheme was, but she was determined to find out.
To answer her question, he put the tip of sword's tip on the floor, then he suddenly brought it back up, causing sparks to appear on the sword's cold surface. At first, Natsumi wasn't sure of what he was doing, until that small spark transformed into a flame. Then it multiplied into more flames, until the entire sword was covered.
Wearing a smirk on his face, her dangerous adversary held the fiery sword up and said,
"I control fire."
He then lunged for Natsumi, who was caught unaware, and so she ended up with only one sword left, the other one having been sliced into half by her enemy's fiery weapon. "Consider yourself lucky that was just a sword. Next time, it'll be your skin."
She began to back away, fear and terror in her eyes. For the first time since the start of the match, she was truly believed that it was possible she could lose.
Or even die.
Her friends, sensing her fear, began to encourage her by showing their support and confidence in her.
"You can do it!"
"He's just a pile of garbage! You can beat him!"
"You'll be fine!"
"You don't have to be scared!"
"Kick that sick bastard's butt where it belongs Natsumi!"
She laughed inwardly at the last one. Then she suddenly heard the voice that she somehow knew would really give her the strength to continue to fight.
"I believe in you, " Ginji's voice stated simply, not resorting to cheers and yells his other friends were doing.
This struck Ban as odd. Knowing Ginji, he would have turned into his chibi form, and taken out his red fans and proceeded to do a fan dance to encourage her. "Something's changed… I wonder what it is…"
"Enough of this. Let's just finish what we started." Her foe snarled, apparently annoyed by their antics. "In fact, those won't help at all. When you fight, you're on your own and no amount of faith and confidence in you can help.'
"Is that what you believe? Are you really sure about that? 'Cause you're wrong." Natsumi shot back. For some reason, she now had the strength to fight.
"Let's end this." He growled.
He pounced on her again and was able to send her flying towards the wall behind her. Startlingly, she was able to perform a somersault and she landed on the wall with her feet and used it as a spring to jump back. He was not anticipating this and so he earned a slash on his chest, bleeding a bit of blood too.
He began hacking her fiercely yet clumsily, blinded by anger and rage. She was able to avoid this easily, weaving in and out of the path of his sword, although she did get a relatively small scratch on her shoulder. That didn't hurt much but the flames did, but she simply gritted her teeth. "I have to win this." She thought determinedly
"Natsumi! Remember the special attack!" yelled Ryuki suddenly. "That'll finish him off!"
She nodded and inserted her remaining sword into its sheath. She then bent her knees and body ever so slightly and positioned her right foot in front of her. He too positioned his body in a battle stance.
Everyone could sense that the battle was almost over.
He made the first move, impatient to get it done. He slashed the air, which would have been useless had it been a normal sword. But it wasn't, and it sent a slice of fire in Natsumi's direction. "This all over now." He thought triumphantly. "She was really stupid to think she could actually beat me."
However, Natsumi did the exact same thing by sending a vacuum of wind towards him and was able to disperse the deadly flames.
"Is that your special attack? Ooh, I'm so scared! You're never going to beat me, so it will be easier just to accept it!" he taunted her, truly believing in his victory.
"You're wrong. I can and will win because I have one thing which you don't have that gives me the advantage over you." She replied, her eyes covered by shadows.
"And what is that?"
"I have friends."
Natsumi didn't lose her patience over him and his taunts. Months of having to bear Ban and Ginji arguing in the Honky Tonk was finally becoming useful. In the time that it had taken for him to taunt her, she had once again resheathed her sword. Now, she attacked him, using a move no one could see quite clearly. It apparently was very effective, proven by the fact that her adversary now lay on the ground, his blood pooling around him. A large scar could be seen on his shoulders.
There was silence, broken by Ginji's cheers of "You did it! I knew you would!"
Then everybody ran towards her and hugged her, happy that she had won. When everything had settled down, Ban asked, "What exactly was that last attack of yours?"
Natsumi smiled and explained, "Ryuki taught it to me. It was called the Nine Headed Dragon strike. You see, it combines all the nine basic moves in kendo and puts it all together. Even if you survive the initial attack, there's no escaping the vacuum it creates."
"And how was he able to create those flames?" asked Hevn curiously. "I didn't see a match or a lighter anywhere."
"Simple." Kazuki answered. "His sword was probably covered with oil and so when there was friction, it created the fire."
"I see…" she murmured.
The door suddenly opened, and everybody readied themselves for an attack.
"Relax," a female voice said, "We're here to help." A group of people could now be seen clearly standing in the door way.
"So, who are you?" Ban asked warily, not wanting to be surprised.
"Believe it or not, we're a rebel group against the Forbidden Section here in Babylon City. We belong to the organization itself but we are sick and tired of it. We do whatever we can to help others and stop the organization. The members of our group are all sorts of people. Fighters, doctors, scientists, engineers, computer geniuses and more, all of them at the top of their field."
Natsumi raised her eyebrow. "I didn't know about this." Ryuki chuckled. "Natsumi, I belong to this group. This is our leader, Leila Sakakino."
"How exactly do you help?" asked Shido. "Have you been doing something about the assassinations? I was one of the Four Kings in the VOLTS group."
"Yeah, we are." replied Ryuki. "When someone I ordered to assassinate a person, that target is warned ahead of time so they have time to get out of here."
"I see," Himiko said. "Since he's been defeated, " she pointed to the head, or the former head of the Forbidden Section who was lying on the ground, "What are you guys going to do now?"
Leila shrugged. "Anything we want to do. After all, we're free already!" She smiled at Natsumi. "And so are you Natsumi. You beat him at his own game, you won fair and square."
Suddenly, Ban remembered something. "I'm sorry about the cliché, but do you have a diskette that could kill the inhabitants of the Lower Town? We're the Get Backers you see, and our main reason for coming here was to retrieve that diskette."
Leila frowned. "I think so. Come in to the store room and see if you can find it." A slight smile tugged on her lips. This puzzled them but they ignored it.
They soon found out why.
The store room was full of diskettes! Not only that, but they all looked alike. Everyone of the rebel group began laughing, while the jaws of everyone in the retrieval team dropped on the floor.
Leila, through her laughter, pointed to the computers and said, "If I were you, I would start checking those diskettes now."
Epilogue
Everyone was coincidentally, in the Honky Tonk. It had been a week after the events of the Forbidden Section. Jubei had reported to them that it no longer existed and that its head had been arrested.
Oh and the retrieval?
After hours and hours of searching through the diskettes, they found the program they had been sent to retrieve. Since many people in the Lower Town were computer generated (even though they weren't aware of it), the software was programmed to delete all those unnecessary people that they no longer needed for their experiments.
So did they get paid?
No. As usual, Ban and Ginji had bad luck on their side, which seemed to have spread to the other retrievers and transporters too. On their way to give the diskette back, they had argued on who would hold it (pretty silly if you ask me) so that it would look like he/she was the one who had found it. Himiko argued that it should be her since she was the transporter. Shido and Ban bickered over who was the better retriever, while Ginji tried to stop them from trying to kill each other. Kazuki didn't really care, while Jubei stood beside him warily, just to make sure that no one would hurt him. Jackal was there too, and he thought he had the best solution to all of the arguments.
He sliced the diskette into pieces.
There was silence after that. Until they all began yelling at him for his stupidity.
"Why on earth did you do that!"
"Are you crazy!"
"We could have earned a lot of money for that!"
"We went through all that trouble for NOTHING!"
"How could you!"
He simply walked away from the noise, saying that it was their problem now and that he didn't care whether he got paid or not. He had had his fun and he had another job waiting for him.
They explained it to their client. He wasn't upset, saying that it was best so it could never be used again. But he also said he wouldn't pay them, since they hadn't been able to give back what he was asking them to retrieve.
So now Ban and Ginji were penniless, begging Paul for food. In other words, everything was back to normal. Natsumi considered everything to be normal, except for the fact that they now knew who she really was. She was also back to normal, the same old Natsumi they knew, kind, cheerful and all.
While they were all lazing around, Ginji suddenly asked Natsumi a question that had been on his mind for quite some time now. "Why didn't you ever tell us?"
The friendly waitress shrugged. "I guess I was afraid you guys would judge me, and you wouldn't want to be my friend anymore. I was sent here to kill you, you know."
Ginji put his hand gently on Natsumi's shoulder, causing her to blush slightly. Things had changed between them over the last coupe of days. She just didn't know what.
"Look, you don't have to worry about us changing you ever again. No matter who you are or what you've done, you'll always be a great friend to me." His hand slipped to her chin and he brought her closer to him and kissed her lips lightly.
Natsumi blushed even more furiously, and so did Ginji, much to everyone's amusement. Suddenly, Ban's fist came out of nowhere and collided with Ginji's head.
"Ouch! What was that for, ne Ban-chan?" he whined, turning into a chibi once again while rubbing his head painfully.
"You're thinking too much. That's not a good sign. You must be hungry." He replied with a smirk on his face. Turning to Natsumi, he asked, "Can we please have some food? We promise we'll pay for it… someday. Just put it to our tab, okay?"
Natsumi nodded, laughing at the same time. "One pizza coming up!" From behind his newspaper, Paul said, "You better make sure you pay for it, you got that Ban?"
"Alright already, don't be such a nagger."
As Natsumi prepared the pizza, she thought about what Ginji had said. She was foolish for thinking that they would judge her. They were her friends and the one good thing about being with your friends is you can act the just the way you are and they would never judge you. Outside, she could hear Ban and Shido bickering again about something very trivial while Ginji tried to stop them. She smiled, thinking,
"Everything really is back to normal."
Thanks for reading my fic! It's now finished, thank God.
Also, you might recognize some of their fight moves from Rurouni Kenshin. I don't own it, like I don't own Get Backers. I just borrowed it since I couldn't really think of anything… hehe, sorry about that!
Lastly, thanks for the reviews I got in 'The Snake Bastard vs. The Monkey Trainer' and 'Ban's Worst Memories'. I have another fic coming up. It's called 'Rain', so look out for it!
Please review! I'll be soooooooooooooo hapi if you do! )
Well, I g2g now so bye!
P.S – Happy summer vacation! We're FREEEEEEEEEE! (I must be getting crazy… hehe) XD