"Are you okay?" Sakura gasped as she held onto the side of a wall. "That was really close. If I hadn't looked up, or if you'd fallen from any higher," she whispered between pants, voice breathless from the adrenaline rush that had filled her when she had deployed her power.

"No, I'm not," was the short answer Akabane gave, also balancing himself on a wall. He was partially doubled over, holding his pained stomach. His whole body felt like he'd done a belly flop off the high board at the pool, or should that analogy fail, like he'd been slapped repeatedly over his entire nude body with the palm of someone's hand.

Sakura took a step forward. So did Akabane, then he slid down to the ground and sat, breathing deeply. A single hiccup managed to escape as he huddled against a trash can. "I just need to rest for a moment. I'll be fine." He didn't want her to come over and try to give him help he didn't need. The stinging sensation was almost entirely gone, owing to the healing power of the castle, and he was afraid he might hurt the sweet girl if she approached him.

Unmoved by his comments, Sakura came up to him and moved to assist him. Akabane quickly raised his bent arm, blocking her gesture with his elbow. "I didn't give you permission to touch me," he choked. The examination had filled up more than a week's worth of his tolerance for physical contact that he hadn't initiated. Did they think he covered every inch of his body from his neck to his feet with fabric because he liked sweating through the entire summer?

She timidly backed off. "I jut wanted to help," she protested weakly as he gathered up his hat from where it had lightly fluttered to the ground. Sometimes he was certain that damn thing had a mind of its own.

"I don't need any," he answered, knowing he was lying. He needed more help than he had words to describe. Had he given into his primal instincts, he would have collapsed into her arms and remained there as long as he possibly could, weakened by shock and disbelief. Then, realizing he did need at least one form of help, he sheepishly looked up at her from beneath his hat. "Where is the exit?"

"Exit? But I haven't taken you to Gen yet..."

He clenched his middle tighter, feeling pain as his fingers dug into his own skin. "It is no longer necessary. As inadvisable as it is, I am going to sew my own wounds with a mirror."

"But..." she began to protest, but stopped when she saw the icy look he was giving her. Not wanting to fight, she surrendered and directed him to depart. Back at Gen's, Himiko arrived too late to take part in the missing Akabane excitement, but she did arrive in time to see a rather distraught Sakura returning with red, puffy eyes. "I only wanted to help him," she sniffled. "He didn't have to be so mean."

Himiko put an arm around Sakura's shoulders. "It's not your fault. He's an unpleasant man, at best. Getting along with others isn't in his strengths."

"Still," Sakura choked quietly. She knew she shouldn't be bothered by the actions of a man so many people despised, but she couldn't help it. It was one of those human irrationalities in dealing with emotion.

"Well," a male voice chirped from behind the girls, startling the two girls. "I come down to run a simple errand and I get to see my honey in the process! What a sweet deal!"

"Kagami!" Himiko snarled. "I'm not your honey."

"So spunky," Kagami sighed romantically. "Anyway, as I said, I have an errand to complete. Getting to see your angry face was just a perk. Gods, but you're beautiful when you're angry."

Himiko raised an eyebrow suspiciously, setting herself between Kagami and Sakura. "Errand?"

He nodded his head, pale blonde hair bobbing about his neck. "I thought Dr. Jackal might want his clothes back, since he left in such a hurry that he forgot them. But, I see he isn't here."

"His clothes? Why would you have his clothes?" Himiko asked, voice seemingly hinting at a potential sexual reason. "At any rate, I'm sure I'll eventually have a job with him. I can take them to him..."

"It's a long story," Kagami taunted, setting down the box of garments. "Have him give me a call when you talk to him, will you? I want to discuss the matters of the baby with him."

Himiko blinked, all her defenses raised. She knew she was weak when the safety of children was involved. Did Kagami? "What baby?" she asked, voice frozen.

"The poor little one that's at his mercy. I feel bad for it, really. Barely a month old, and probably won't live to see two months with him involve-"

Himiko stopped Kagami's speech by slamming her fist down hard on the table. In her head she was seeing a warm, pink little bundle wrapped in blankets and cooing to itself. Of course, she really couldn't be blamed for having such a mental image. Kagami had constructed his speech as such. "I'm not leaving a baby in that man's hands. However, if you're lying to me, I'll return here and rip out your spleen with my bare hands for toying with my emotions!"

A sweat drop decorated Kagami's face as Himiko stormed past him, muttering to herself. "She's so beautiful when she's violent..."

"Perhaps you should take a moment to think this out!" Sakura shouted as she chased Himiko past Kagami, carrying Akabane's clothes under her arm. She panted as she tried to keep pace with the fuming Himiko. "He's a very strong fighter, isn't he?"

"Not as strong as I am when I'm royally pissed off," Himiko snarled, even though both girls knew that it wasn't true. Akabane was much older and more experienced in fighting than either of the girls, if no other skill level difference existed between the three. She slung one blue-spandex clad leg over the side of her small motorbike, then coolly looked up at Sakura. "Are you in or out?" she asked, eyes flaming as she referred with a hand gesture to the sidecar of her bike.

Sakura was deeply worried about the woman she regarded as one of her few close female friends. She got into the sidecar if only to make sure that Himiko wouldn't do something in her haste that would make the black figure of Doctor Jackal kill her. As Himiko waved dangerously in and out of traffic, Sakura closed her eyes out and cried out as a truck blared its massive horns at the tiny bike. "Perhaps you shouldn't drive while angry!" she cried out.

Himiko ignored her, pulling her bike into a slot marked for bicycle parking (by which Sakura assumed they actually meant non-motorized bicycle parking, but considering Himiko's mood, she didn't dare correct her.) Sakura looked up at the ancient high-rise. At one time it had been a lavish place, as the rusted wrought iron decorations and crumbling decorations attested. "This is where someone like Jackal-san lives?"

"This is where he lived as of six months ago, which doesn't necessarily mean he's still there," Himiko answered, swinging one of her perfume bottles in the direction of the door to the lobby. The lock turned red-orange, rusting and corroding before their eyes.

"What are you doing?" Sakura cried. "You've lost all sense of reason!" After all, most powerful humans didn't display their abilities openly or use them for trivial matters.

"Do you think he'd let us in if we called him and nicely asked for a cup of tea? Stay with the bike; I left it running. I'm going to save that baby and we're going to run before he can come after us."

"Are you sure it needs to be saved?" Sakura asked as she stepped back towards Himiko's bike. "I mean, if it is his own child... we don't know anything about the situation! We just have one sentence from an unsavory source!"

Himiko calmed, shoulders slumping forward. "You're right," she admitted. "I'm just sensitive about the safety of children. But you're right, I should know the situation before I rush-"

The noise was almost deafening, following by a rush of hot air and soot that caught the girls by surprise. Sakura fell over, landing on her side, as Himiko jumped into attack stance. "What was that?" Sakura cried, tending to her skinned elbow and her wounded pride.

Himiko pointed upward to a small black puff of smoke. "Something exploded." She looked back at Sakura. "You don't think..." Himiko turned and ran into the building, knowing her time to find the baby if Akabane were involved were limited before the police and news crews would arrive. She had maybe two minutes, maximum. Himiko gasped and panted as she raced up the stairs, praying there wouldn't be a second explosion. She had to push past panicking families fleeing down the stairs with blanket-wrapped children. Fortunately, she was athletic enough to break through the crowd on the level where the smoke blew.

She coughed on the fumes, finding a crowd gathered around what remained of a darkened doorframe. They should be running, not curiosity seeking, Himiko thought in anger. What if something else exploded, or there were a fire? They'd be killed, or at least stampede.

She found Akabane on the edges of the crowd, leaning against the smooth white hallway and pushing away a woman trying to push a wet cloth onto his face.

"Akabane-san?" she asked.

"If I hadn't have wanted to clean the bathroom, I'd likely be dead," he answered in a monotone voice, not looking at Himiko. "There was a bomb under the sink... with the cleaning supplies... I only knew what one looks like... because-" he coughed. "I only had enough time to grab my laptop and run." He was shivering slightly and Himiko noticed for the first time that he didn't have a shirt on beneath his coat. "I got halfway down the hall when it went off," he told her, clutching the computer to his exposed chest.

"Never mind the computer, what about the baby? Is the baby safe?"

His head snapped up, eyes absolutely frozen. "What did Kagami say to you?" he asked in a tone that stung with acidity.

"How did you know Kagami said anything?" she asked, feeling a twinge of actual fear. She hadn't felt that way about him since the first time she'd had to work with him. At the time she hadn't get learned the basic principals for interaction with and control of Dr. Jackal, so he'd absolutely terrified her. She'd been convinced he had intentions of drinking her blood before the night was over. When she realized he was only doing it for the purpose of terrorizing her, however, and called him on it he got easier to deal with. For a moment, she considered how odd it was that the man whose sanity she could honestly fear had turned to a dull nuisance feeling of dislike towards him. He could choose to kill her at any moment, but once you got to working with him, there was a feeling that if you just left him to do his thing... he wouldn't.

"Just that you had a baby in your hands and you were going to kill it."

"So I see. The... the baby that you refer to is not in my hands, but I believe it's... fine." Even Himiko noticed the particular odd emphasis on the way he'd said the word hands, but as the two minute time limit was rapidly approaching, getting the two of them out of there without police intervention was a higher priority than questioning his word choice.

"Did he lie to me?" she asked as she pulled Akabane to his feet. "I threatened to rip out his spleen if he- Akabane!" she screamed, as he'd suddenly taken off down the hallway. She chased him, only able to keep up with him because he wasn't using his ability to move inhumanly fast. "Come back here, damn you!"

The reason he'd wanted to clean the tub was that it was dripping with his own blood, a few bent scalpels lying in a halo about his body. He'd picked up the ones that were still salvageable. He'd tried to attack the thing inside his body by direction his blades at it. When he had been about to deal with it, a feeling of extreme peace and not pain, strangely, had filled his body for a moment before his weapons had been violently ejected out of his body. It was just like that battle with Ginji, if he'd been meditating when Ginji had torn his flesh apart.

He ended up having to sit in the stairwell, lungs choked with smoke to the point where his coughing made him unable to run. Blood loss made him dizzy, so he clung to the railing to avoid falling. Himiko caught up with him then, chest heaving from the effort of having to chase him down the hallway. Being taller than her, he could take larger steps, and thus she had to try harder to match his pace than he did. "Why did you run away?"

He didn't answer Himiko because he was thinking about why he'd attacked the thing in the first place. "I heard its heart beating."

"What?" Himiko asked.

"Nothing..." he answered, standing back up."I should go until the panic dies down. It's not good for me to be in highly public situations." He stumbled as he tried to walk and fell, tumbling down four steps before coming to rest on the landing.

"Akabane?" Himiko asked, clamoring down the stairs to the landing.

"Is my laptop okay?" he asked, sitting up and trying not to seem concerned. He coughed again, spitting up a bit of bloody phlegm.

"I've never seen you fall before," she answered, "and it's fine, you didn't fall far."

"I was worried, it has my client information in it," he answered, choking on the dryness in his throat.

"Forget about your job for once!" she screamed. "You can't even walk!"

"I lost a lot of blood today," he argued as Himiko forced his arm around her shoulders. His fingers were so white that for a second she thought he'd had his gloves on, then realized she couldn't normally see the fine details of his scars when he did.

"You're not kidding on that one," she remarked. "You should get out of the building before its too late to avoid the police and the news crews. If you lost a lot of blood, you should go to the hospital."

"I can't."

She didn't press him further only because it took all her concentration to get both of them down the stairs without stumbling. She didn't agree with his comment being true, figuring it was a matter of stubborn pride and I won't more than I can't. It must be killing him to need me to move around like this, she thought with a smug satisfaction.

She was having Sakura help him into the sidecar when the man with the camera and the microphone approached them. They'd been lucky, most of the news crews were inside the lobby due to Himiko's having destroyed the lock earlier that would have normally kept them outside.

"Excuse me, can I interview you about the explosion?" he asked as Akabane hid his face from the camera using his hat.

"No, he fell down the stairs while we were getting out of the building. We don't know anything," Himiko snapped, pushing the camera away as she hid her face with her hand. Sakura was hiding behind her headscarf as she helped Akabane adjust himself in the sidecar.

As Himiko drove away the cameraman set down his equipment and picked a cellular phone out of his pocket. "As you said, the experiment was not harmed beyond shock. I still don't understand why we'd blow up someone's apartment when we want to protect them in the long run though. Yes, yes, I know. Don't question your logic. I only hope you know what you're doing, boss... to make him afraid and paranoid, so we can be his only friends in the world. I just think there are better ways to wear someone down and make them dependent. No, I'm not questioning your methods, I'm not! I just- yes, yes sir. I'll do that." With that, he clicked the phone off. His boss could be so... anal sometimes. He almost felt bad for the experiment he'd been assigned to watch. Such a pretty young man, chosen to suffer only because he'd had the unfortunate luck of having been born with purple eyes.

-0-0-

To Be Continued.