Akabane stirred a small white ceramic cup of cold tea. It had been hot when he'd ordered it. However, hardly a sip had been taken before it had sat untouched long enough to lose its heat.

The circles under his eyes had reached such a dulled gray texture and dusted quality that it looked as though he were recovering from getting caught on the wrong eng of a pair of brass knuckles. He'd barely been able to sleep, resting an hour or two at a time at best of late. Either he found himself dozing off in the middle of times when he should have been doing other things, or tossing and turning under the sheets when he was supposed to be sleeping.

Considering that he was mostly nocturnal, this normally wouldn't have bothered him, but he found it more difficult to search to answers to his disappearance if he were constantly finding himself napping in bus stations. When he did manage to take those rare naps, he tended to suffer feverish nightmares that left him gasping for air upon awakening.

"Akabane-san?" Himiko asked, uninvitedly arriving behind him. He hadn't planned on seeing her there, but her presence didn't bother or excite him one way or another. "You look like hell," she noted, pulling up a chair. "Your skin is absolutely gray." She paused, studying him. "You should see a doctor. A real doctor."

He bristled at her comment, then relaxed. He'd never told her about his qualifications as a "Real" doctor, so she couldn't be expected to know about them. Still, it was a source of wound in his pride for him to have all his medical knowledge and not be able to self-diagnose what was wrong with himself. "Mmm," he mumbled in response, nibbling on a handful of squid jerky. "Want some?" he asked, holding up the bag to distract her.

She took a few pieces out of the bag and sucked on them. "I do, but I thought you hated this stuff. You wouldn't even sit up front with us the time Mr. No Brakes brought a bag to share."

"I do. It's vile, and the smell alone makes me want to vomit."

"Then why are you eating it?" Himiko asked, incredulous.

"I just wanted it."

She raised a thin eyebrow at him. "You must be sick. I've never heard you mention wanting something you disliked before."

"Am I not entitled to change my mind?" he asked, snapping a bit more than he would have preferred to. It wasn't his nature to snap, but the lack of decent sleep left him edgy. "They are tolerable with enough soy sauce, I have discovered," he shrugged. "I have to use the restroom now. Excuse me," he said, sliding out of his chair and disappearing in the direction of the Little Boy's room.

Himiko sighed. She didn't understand him, and as the quote went, doubted he understood himself. Looking down, she realized that he'd doodled words on his tray of soy with his chopsticks. It took her a moment of squinting to read them, but she managed to make out the words. "White… man… what does white man mean?" she asked aloud, not realizing that Akabane had returned from his bathroom trip.

"Hm?" he asked, returning to his seat and causing Lady Poison to jump slightly.

She pointed to his plate. "You wrote the kanji for white and man in your soy."

He didn't have an answer to that. He knew he'd been doodling in his side dish, but he hadn't consciously realized he was writing words. This bothered him, but he wasn't about to express that to Lady Poison. "I guess I drifted off while playing in my food."

Himiko regarded him suspiciously. "It's also not your nature to do things without thinking, or disappear for almost two weeks, leaving your contracts unfulfilled. Akabane… are you… did you… when I first met you…"

"No," he answered, his voice sharp but distant. A piece of squid jerky dangled from his lips. "I wouldn't go back to that." He knew where the conversation was heading, and he was in no mood to discuss that or how fruitless his attempts at finding his missing days had been. However, she might think of some detail he'd missed, so he had to.

"Himiko-san, what would you do if you'd lost something important to you and couldn't find it again, no matter how hard you tried?"

Himiko blinked at him, then jokingly answered, "Why, I'd call the Get Backers, of course."

Well, there now. That was a perfectly logical solution to his problem, and it would give him an excuse to send his preciously beloved Ginji-kun into terror convulsions again. He was surprised that he hadn't thought of it himself. "Thank you, Lady Poison. As usual the most obvious solution is the most overlooked one."

"What? Wait! I-" Himiko cried, spitting out her drink and throwing down a few bills to cover the cost as she chased Akabane out the door. "I was joking! They'll never take a case from you! Just the sound of your name makes Ban want to vomit."

Akabane put a hand on his pained intestines. "Considering the nature of this flu that has stuck to me for the last week, if that is the case, I shall easily return the gesture," he answered earnestly.

She grabbed the back of his coat. "If you're sick you should be home in bed, not picking fights with Midou Ban!" she cried, trying to pull him back.

He ignored her, letting her drag off the back of his outfit. "What do my affairs with the Get Backers matter to you? You say you do not like Midou Ban, but yet, every time he is mentioned in his absence your face turns colors of red. You also seem to care if harm should come to him. Is there something I should read behind the lines, Himiko-chan?"

She sighed and released him, not wanting to fight with Jackal when he was in the mood to do so. He could be as tenacious at hanging onto meat on a bone as his namesake animal. When he was determined to be stubborn, trying to control him was like trying to hold up a Bullet Train with your bare hands. Resigned, she merely followed him, hoping to minimize the amount of damage done. Oh, how she hated men and all their machismo.

All of Himiko's concern turned out to be temporarily for naught, as the Get Backers were out on another case when the Dr. Jackal came to call. This "disappointed and displeased" Akabane, who quietly vanished into the men's room upon making his displeasure known.

While Himiko quietly waited, the overhead door bells announced the entrance of another customer. She brightened up when her semi-friend Sakura entered, carrying a manila envelope in her delicate hands.

"My brother asked me to bring these to Reitei," she explained, indicating the contents of the envelope. "Are you here to visit Ban-san?"

"Hardly," Himiko scoffed, waving off the suggestion. "I'm here because Dr. Jackal is as stubborn as an ass. He's determined to hire them, whether they want him to or not."

Speak of the devil, Akabane appeared out of the bathroom. "I dislike squid jerky coming up twice as much as I dislike it going down."

"If you're sick, go to bed!" Himiko snapped.

"I am not sick, my stomach has just decided to rebel against the communist rest of my body and is preventing me from eating or sleeping as a means of taking my cells hostage until demands are met."

"I can help with that!" Sakura said brightly. "Wan-san, might I borrow a booth?"

Paul looked about at the devoidness of customers, and then sighed. "You might as well go ahead, but clean up if we get business."

Sakura fearlessly grabbed Akabane's black-clothed arm. "Lie down on the booth," she commanded, removing a row of sharp needles from her sash.

Akabane, remaining upright right where he was, eyed her suspiciously. Since he'd been trained as a classical doctor, he'd been taught to treat chiropracticy and acupuncture as quack arts. "I doubt the dubious medical benefits of sticking needles into my flesh."

"Who would have imagined? The infamous scalpel-wielding Doctor Jackal, afraid of needles," Himiko taunted.

That wasn't true. He wasn't afraid of them, per se. He just… didn't like them. It wasn't the same thing at all. "You may take it as you like," he shrugged, his usual response to such a situation.

Natsumi entered from the back just then, adjusting her little apron. She'd just arrived for her afternoon shift and had overhead them chatting. "It's okay to be afraid of needles. They hurt and they're kind of scary," she said innocently. Himiko and Sakura burst out laughing while Akabane hid his expression beneath the brim of his back hat.

"As it seems, I have no choice but to bow to public opinion in the form of peer pressure," he sighed dramatically, flopping down on the booth. It let out that plastic fart that only restaurant booths and cheaply upholstered vinyl chairs are capable of making.

Sakura dedicatedly applied needles and pressure to the appropriate places along his body. "Would you say it was more of a low abdomen ache or a back spinal pain along the ribcage?"

"Lower body and nausea," he answered as she adjusted a few of the devices intended to push on his pressure points. "Really, I doubt the ability of needles and magnets to cure a virus."

"Have a little more faith in ancient healing techniques. If they didn't work they wouldn't have survived being handed down through the ages."

He hated to admit it, but the sickness did let up relatively quickly. Eventually, the pressure-pain let up entirely, leaving him feeling like one does after letting out gas pressure through a good fart. In fact, he felt the best he had in three days. Of course, he was reluctant to admit this, and just shrugged the treatment off as "okay."

It was in the middle of a heated Go battle between Sakura and Himiko when the Get Backers finally returned, looking bedraggled, muddy, and wet. "What happened to you?" Paul asked. "And don't drip on the wood floor." Natsumi, in the meantime, rushed them fresh dishrags to wash their faces with.

"The client never showed, and the transmission failed out so we had to push-start the Lady Bug in the rain, on a dirt road, going uphill on a mountain," Ban growled, yanking mud chunks out of his hair.

"Ban-chan, where are we going to get the money to fix the car if we can't use the car to get jobs?" Ginji whimpered, tears in his big brown eyes.

"You already have a client waiting," Paul yawned, gesturing. Seeing Sakura, Ban and Ginji's eyes lit up with brilliant boy sparkles. Rushing over to Sakura, they gripped and kissed her hands.

"What do you need, Sakura-chan," Ginji asked, hope shining in his eyes.

"Actually," Sakura stammered, a sweat drop hanging off her head wrap. "I just came to bring the scarf you left at my brother's place back," she said, handing Ginji the scarf in the manila envelope. "Your client fell asleep."

"Huh?" Ginji asked, looking down into Sakura's lap where she was pointing. Akabane was indeed asleep, his head cradled in Sakura's lap. Ginji turned tare and leaped backwards, fear flaming in the black dots that had become his eyes. "Ah-Akabane-san!" he cried, flailing his stubs of arms.

Akabane opened his eyes upon hearing his name. "Huh?" he muttered in that daze that accompanies being suddenly jerked out of near-sleep.

"You seemed so exhausted that I didn't have the heart to wake you," Sakura explained, sitting him upright as he rubbed his eyes.

"Wha-what is HE doing here?" Ban shouted, hair seeming to puff up more than usual in anger.

"I came here to hire you to get something back," Akabane answered, smiling brightly. "Is that not what you do?"

Ginji shook like a leaf, hiding on Ban's shoulders. "We don't take jobs from monsters like you!"

"Are you sure that's wise?" Paul asked. "You do need to get your transmission repaired…"

"Don't… don't tell HIM that!" Ban screamed. "Besides, what could he possibly need US to do? He's a transporter, mortal enemy of the Get Backer!"

"I need you to get back my memories," Akabane answered quietly, standing up in the booth and brushing past Sakura. "Twelve days were stolen from me, and I want to confront those responsible. Your… Jagan… it can help me."

"The ja-" Ban began to say that the Jagan was not the same as cheap hypnotism, and that he couldn't recover lost memories. Then he'd realized that Akabane had money, and didn't know that. He could just make up a few memories and charge for it, and then he'd be on his way to the repair shop to get a new transmission. "-gan costs as much as a new transmission, if you actually come here to request me to use it. I also can't be held liable for any permanent mental damage caused by asking for such a favor."

Akabane nodded gravely, actually not what Ban had expected. "I understand there are both risk and cost involved," he answered slowly, reaching into the inner pocket of his upper coat. He removed a large pile of bills, waving it slightly so the bills flapped like tongues rasping and taunting a drooling Ban and Ginji.

"Thankyoufordoingbusinesswithus," Ban said, grabbing for the cash. Akabane drew it back with lightning speed.

"Getting paid before doing the job isn't the way of our kind, is it?" he asked, smiling innocently.

Ban narrowed his eyes in irritation. "Fine. Let's get this over with quickly so you can pay me all the faster. Any clues for me to work on?"

Akabane looked down at his folded, gloved hands. "The last memory I have is trying to light my cigarette, then waking up with a cut on my abdomen." He paused. "No, there's more. I remember seeing… a reverse shadow."

Ginji blinked. "What's a reverse shadow?"

"You know how, in the movies, when people barely remember someone or something they saw, they remember a shadowy figure? I remember a shadowy black background with a blurry figure. He's so white he looks as though he were made of light, and-" the words broke off, and no one pressured him to say more.

Ban frowned. That wasn't much to go on. At least, that way, he could make up a memory that would fit with relative ease.

"Okay, let's just get this done," Ban said, lifting Akabane's head by the chin so he could see his eyes under the hat. Akabane didn't like it, but said nothing. Ban blinked twice, then focused, concentrated, and…

"OW! OW! FREAKING HELL! BLOODY OH HELL!" Ban screamed, grabbing his eyes and falling backwards, thrashing on the floor.

Ginji grabbed Akabane by the shirt, shaking him harshly. "What did you do to him!?"

"I didn't do anything," Akabane protested, feeling the heat radiating from Ginji's hands coming through the thin fabric of his shirt.

"Liar!" Ginji shouted, tears in his eyes, his body crackling with angry electricity. Himiko grabbed Natsumi and pulled the girl behind the counter. Paul, for his part, pulled Sakara back behind a support beam. The air felt heavy about Akabane and he choked, suffocating suddenly. Suddenly, his stomach hurt more than it had in days. It felt like he was being ripped apart from the inside out.

"No, Ginji!" Ban cried, grabbing Ginji's ankle with one hand while the other remained clamped over his eyes. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but he didn't do it."

Ginji calmed immediately, dropping Akabane against the plastic seat. His body made a loud thud when he landed, and no one seemed to notice that he wasn't moving beyond the slight twitch of his long fingers.

It took a few moments, but they got Ban into a stool. Natsumi ran him out a cold cloth from the back room.

"Geeze, it burns," Ban fumed, holding the cloth.

"What happened?" Himiko asked, her hand on his shoulder. "I've never… no, rarely, heard you scream like that?"

"There's some… thing… something like a seal in there. It attacked me when I tried to use the Jagan." Ban slowly lowered the cloth, resulting in a gasp rising up from those gathered about him. The tissues about both his eyes were swollen and already turning brown-black-blue, as though he'd suffered from a nasty bar fight. "I saw a symbol like this," Ban said, scribbling with red ink on a napkin. "It's like they burned it right into my mind," he said, scribbling.

Sakura leaned over. "It looks like a corporate logo and a rune stone had a baby." Akabane-san, does this symbol mean anything to you? Akabane-san?"

Natsumi, standing by Akabane, looked up in concern. "His shirt is all bloody."

Sakura crossed over and assisted Natsumi by yanking open Akabane's clothes. "The stitches burst," Sakura diagnosed, pointing to a line of fine thread poking at odd intervals out of his skin and an ooze of blood escaping from that site.

"I know what to do!" Natsumi cried, running into the kitchen.

Twenty minutes or so later, Akabane slowly came back to consciousness. He wasn't sure why he'd passed out, and the moments leading up to him passing out were vague and confused in his head. The first thing he became aware of was that the breeze he felt was from his pants and shirt being torn open, a damp dishtowel shoved into his underwear. He blinked, trying to clear his hazy mind. Was it a party? "Why am I half undressed?"

"Your stitches tore open in the commotion. Natsumi fixed them temporarily," Himiko answered.

"The girl? How?"

Natsumi blushed and grinned, shyly holding up a tube of superglue. "I heard about some doctors using superglue for surgery."

"You… superglued me together?" he asked, amazed and slightly annoyed. His fingers traced the brown stain where blood had spread over his shirt. It was less obvious where it had stained his pants. "It shouldn't have torn open. I've had it for slightly over a week. It should have healed…"

"At any rate, you need to see someone to repair those stitches," Himiko said, shaking her head at him.

Akabane turned his head away. "It's not an option for me to go to a hospital." They'd likely want to feel his stomach. What if they did x-rays? Despite logic, it was possible to capture his hidden blades on an x-ray image. That always lead to awkward explanations, often overshadowing the real reason he'd been taken to the hospital in the first place. Then there were those who feared his abilities, or who had actually tried to harm him because of them, he thought as he fingered the scars on the backs of his hands. No, he wouldn't go to a hospital. Of course, he could just take the blades out before going, but he'd rather walk around Infinite Castle naked than go anywhere unarmed.
"If you're worried about the doctor recognizing you and turning you in, you could go to Gen. He wouldn't turn you in," Himiko suggested.

Of course, though he wouldn't admit it, he never would have thought of going to the Infinite Castle for healing instead of battling. Even in the times he'd suffered massive wounds in the fortress, he hadn't gone to Gen to be treated like the others. He'd dragged himself home and nursed his own wounds. He preferred being alone with his pain, even if it could be terribly lonely binding your own wounds in silence.

Sakura left with the still light-headed Akabane, owing to the fact that Akabane claimed he didn't know how to get to the healer's workplace. After a few minutes of just sitting in silence, Himiko looked over at the sullen Ban. "You want to go after him, don't you?"

"I normally wouldn't give a piece about that monster one way or another, but…" he gestured to the black circles about his eyes. "It's personal now. Whoever left that trap tangled with the wrong master of the Jagan," Ban answered, slamming a fist down on the bar table. "Ginji, you stay here. I'm going to find out what's going on."

"But Ban-chan, I want to go with you?"

"And take the risk of the Infinite Castle yet again? Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they did this to him JUST to lure your soft-heart there."

"You both stay!" Himiko snapped. "I'll go and report back to you."

"You can't go alone! You'll get killed!"

"Oh, so you're saying I can't take care of myself?" Himiko snarled at Ban.

While the three argued violently about who was capable of going where and why, Sakura lead Akabane to Gen's little "infirmary," where he found the String Master visiting the old man's mannish granddaughter. This was of no concern of Akabane's; he neither cared for nor against the thread user. As a former subordinate to the Thunder Emperor, he severed as no milestone for Akabane to measure his power against.

There was an awkward moment where the friends greeted one another, awkward not for them but for Akabane because he was distinctly excluded from the greeting.

It was while the friends reacquainted with one another that a movement from the back caught Akabane's attention. A combination of curiosity and propensity towards finding someone worth challenging propelled him to follow the darting figure. He left the others to their conversation.

About a minute later, the greetings ended. "So, what can I do for you today?" Gen asked, looking directly at Sakura.

"It's not for me, Akabane-san's stitches are… eh? Where'd he go? He was here a minute ago…"

Akabane, meanwhile, was still following the mysterious dart through the castle maze. He felt vaguely like Alice in Wonderland yet again, although his quarry was certainly something other than a white rabbit.

He was lead to a massive round structure made up of a cage of iron bars. At first glance it appeared to be a large circular prison cell. Upon closer inspection, thick black cables winding like snakes out of the top revealed it to be an antiquated hotel of the kind common to the old four-star hotels.

"Am I to get inside?" Akabane asked the empty air. He was getting bored and irritated with playing games, and he had to go to the bathroom.

His answer came in the form of the hallway behind him swelling shut like a grotesque horror movie scene. It left no direction to walk but into the elevator. Subtly wasn't a key feature of those who pulled the strings in Infinite Castle. However, it worked for him. If they'd asked him to play more games with them he might have left.

The elevator doors slammed shut behind his back with the oppressive clank of metal connection, making the elevator feel all the more like a prison. It jerked violently as it rose upward into the black shaft. The jerk was enough to nearly throw Akabane off his feet. Overhead, he could hear huge gears churning, but he could not see them for the darkness.

It was then that he realized he was completely caged, in bars that he probably would not be able to break through due to their nature as part of the Infinite Castle, and being pulled through a tunnel so black it was as if the world about him had ceased to exist. There was a likelihood that he was now a captive of the Gods of Infinite Castle, and a possibility he would never see another sunset again.

At least, he thought, I am no longer bored.