There is a woman in the dark underworld of transporting known as Lady Poison. She is beautiful, deadly, smart. She is everything you wish you were, and so much more. At that moment, however, she hardly felt that way. For you see, she was sitting in a bar where many of the transporters were known to associate, ducking a flying beer can.

"I hate this bar," Himiko protested, running her fingers through her hair to make sure the can didn't drip on her during its trajectory across the room. She honestly wouldn't come there, were it not a good hub for clients and transporters to find one another. Lately, jobs had been a bit scarce, so she was forced to wait with the rest of the bottom of the barrel for something to come her way.

By bottom of the barrel, though, she didn't mean transporters who weren't any good. She meant a transporter who was too good- Akabane Kuroudo, the most hated and vile figure in the transporting world. She was one of the few who actually dared take up a seat beside him, which she did because he offered a sort of sense of protection. There was this three foot "no fly" zone around him as far as thrown objects and drunken men were concerned. There had been ever since someone had hit him in the back of the head with a bottle. No one had seen that person since.

"Ginji told me I should become a retriever, again," she smirked, throwing it into a casual discussion about her last transporting job. She knew Ginji's harsh words got underneath Akabane's skin from the way his fingers twitched when the boy's name was mentioned in the absence of Ginji's physical presence. "He said he was sure Ban could be talked into adding a third Get Backer," she smiled, taking a sip of her drink. That was another added benefit of sitting next to Akabane- no one dared taunt her about the fact that she didn't drink alcohol. Still, she was in a bad mood because Ban and Ginji had cost her yet another job, and she was taking her frustrations out by unwisely teasing Dr. Jackal.

"You realize," Akabane said softly, his face hidden behind his hat. "That Ginji-kun only makes those offers to you because you are female."

Himiko snorted. "Right. Are you suggesting that Ginji would want you to become a retriever as well, if only you were a girl? Are you forgetting that he considers you one of the worst monsters to ever sweep across this world?"

Akabane laughed very gently at Himiko's comment. "Ginji-kun's world view is a little bit narrow if he honestly believes me more terrible than the greatest dictators the world has known."

"Well, he does, whether that is a limited world view or not."

"He would be willing to forgive everything I had ever done to him- if only I had a shape like this," he said, making a womanly curve in the air with his cigarette. The shape lingered for a moment before drifting away, misshapen.

Himiko raised an eyebrow, as in her opinion he almost already did have an hourglass figure, with the way his coat made his waist seem smaller and his hips seem bigger than they really were. Of course, even Himiko didn't dare bring such a thing up to him. Generally, there were no subjects he was really touchy about, but she wasn't about to go trying to find one. "Right," she said. "Ginji would forgive you for brutally slaughtering enemies at a lower fighting class than you if you could bounce your way out of the situation."

"I believe that he would. How horribly sexist my dear Ginji-kun is."

"I don't think Ginji is sexist at all, but seeing as how you are distinctly not female, we'll never know now, will we?"

"I am afraid so, Himiko-chan. It is a good thing for you, because you know I am right."

Himiko rolled her eyes. How someone could have an argument with her without ever raising his voice above a barely-audible whisper was beyond her. She'd heard Akabane shout before, and when he did, his voice was at the volume that the level most people she knew usually talked at. "If you say so, Jackal. If you say so, but like how many licks it takes to the center of the Tootsie Roll pop… the world will never know." She sighed. "No one here is hiring tonight. You want to walk home with me?"

"Whatever you want, Lady Poison," he shrugged, throwing a handful of bills out on the table and sliding off of the bar stool. He extended the crook of his arm to her, acting the part of the perfect gentleman. She put her hands quickly in her pockets.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not hold hands," she said. "Someone might get the wrong idea about us."

The two of them disappeared out of the bar together, their dark clothes making it seem as though the night had swallowed them up as soon as they were beyond the neon glow of the bar. Back at the bar, the cloaked figure who had been sitting on the other side of Akabane smirked, a smile spreading across teeth so finely sharpened they could almost be fangs. Their fingers rested on a piece of paper taken from a fortune cookie. The words said, in small blue type, "Be careful what you wish for, for you just might get it."

Hours passed by, during which Akabane escorted Himiko home and then returned to his own apartment. He lived on the second floor of an apartment complex that had been situated like a motel, with the doors facing outward to the environment rather than inward to a common hallway. It was a small apartment, one room with a cubicle-like division that served as a kitchen and another cubicle-like division that contained a toilet and a tiny square of raised tile with a hose hanging above it that served as a makeshift shower.

Akabane needed no more in the way of basic necessities to get by; he ate most of his meals while out on jobs, and spent very little time in his residence when he wasn't sleeping. He spent far more time either on jobs or looking for jobs, and what time wasn't reserved for working was reserved for training for working.

He yawned as he fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, his fingers oddly clumsy. He was unusually tired for having spent the entire night at the bar, waiting to be hired. Maybe the bartender had accidentally used a stronger proof alcohol than he was used to. It hadn't tasted off, but he had been nursing a cigarette all night and remembered very little besides the taste of paper and smoke.

Too tired to bother with pajamas, and with the weather being unseasonably hot, he chose to strip down to his boxers and crawl beneath the sheets on the matt, hugging his pillow with one thin arm as he rested. With that, night passed into day.

Around one in the afternoon, a delivery truck pulled up front of Akabane's apartment complex. Not "delivery" in the sense that Akabane did deliveries, but delivery in the postal service sense. Akabane, being the sort who could not be bothered with the time it took to purchase groceries from a store, used an internet service that would deliver his food-product needs right to his apartment door.

The delivery boy sighed, pulling the smallish bundle out of his truck. It hadn't been a very good day. The packing service had messed up an order from a shrewish older woman. She'd felt that, even though he kept telling her that he wasn't the one who had filled her order, he was the one who definitely needed to hear about how someone else had screwed up. Just promising that he'd get the correct items sent hadn't been enough, oh no. She'd insisted on having a long talk with his supervisors on his cell phone, using his daytime minutes, first. Then after some more verbal berating, she'd let him go only for his next customer to fume at him about how late he was.

"I can't take any more surprises today," he whined, dragging the bundle up the stairs to the second floor. "Apartment 205… this is it," he said, knocking solidly on the door. "Please, don't let this one yell at me as well."

Akabane raised his head, yawning. At some point in the night, his pillow had ended up on top of his head, so it looked as though he had a marshmallow hat on. He looked at his clock, grunting. He'd been up past 5 am… who the heck would be waking him before he'd gotten a full night's sleep, and knocking at his door no less?

He staggered out of his bed, wrapping a towel around his waist and yawning. He didn't bother putting his glasses on yet, stumbling over to the door. He was too tired to bother turning on the lights, as he didn't want to deal with the light hurting his eyes. "Who is it?" he yawned, rubbing his fingers through his bed mangled hair.

"Delivery from Ja-pan, your best bread and grocery supplier in the area!" he said, trying not to sound like he was sick of the Ja-pan bread joke already. It didn't help that an anime had recently been released whose name used the same pun. It only meant more people felt obligated to tell him what a dumb joke they thought it was.

"Oh," Akabane yawned, unlatching the three locks he'd had installed on the door besides the lock it had already come with. "I forgot I ordered," he commented, opening the door wide.

The boy started, head and shoulders turning brilliantly red and he held his clipboard up in front of his face. "Pl… please! I can only take cash or credit! Only cash or credit! My boss will get mad at me if I don't come back with the right amount of money!"

Akabane rubbed his eyes, wondering what the heck was wrong with the boy. He should have worn his glasses; all he could tell was that a slightly fuzzy youth with a clipboard held up so that it looked as though he had no head was trembling on his doorstep. "What are you babbling about?" he asked, picking up his wallet and dividing out the correct payment. "Here is your cash."

"Can you… can you attach it to the clipboard?" the boy asked, continuing to shake. "I don't want to come out from behind here."

Akabane rolled his violet eyes and did so, picking up the bundle of groceries lying at the trembling boy's feet. He checked to make sure nothing was broken when the boy had suddenly dropped the entire packaging, noticing the trembling boy occasionally peeking out from behind the board. What was the matter with him? He was acting like he'd never seen a man with scars on his chest before. Maybe it was the tattoo. People had jumped to the conclusion that he was a yakuza before because of it.

"Nothing seems to be broken," he said. "Is it appropriate to tip you?"

The boy's heart nearly jumped into his chest. "Ye-yes, but I really am behind on my route…"

Akabane stuck another few bills to the clipboard. "There. Try to relax, or you might get into a traffic accident," he commented, shutting the door solidly behind himself.

The boy lowered the clipboard, face absolutely crimson and blood oozing from his nose. "I do believe in karma, I do," he muttered.
"Weird boy," Akabane commented, just throwing the entire bundle of groceries into his fridge. He'd sort them out after his shower. He wanted to get the smell of the bar off of his skin. He dropped the sheet and his boxers where they lay, entering his "bathroom" and pulling the plastic curtain that separated it from the rest of his apartment. He yawned again, wondering why in the world he would be as tired as he was. He could hardly think straight, let alone drag himself out of bed. Maybe the shower would wake him up…

He stumbled into the shower, shivering at first until the water warmed up. He shut his eyes, waiting for it to heat up, still yawning. He hoped he didn't fall asleep and drown in two inches of water. That would be one of the most humiliating ends for the infamous Dr. Jackal he could imagine.

When the water was warm enough, he stepped into the spray. He'd often thought about getting a shower that was more advanced than a garden hose with a flower water head on it attached to a faucet in the side of the wall, but it served its purpose. As he started cleaning himself, he reached down to wash something most men generally consider to be very important to them… and discovered that something was very, very wrong. For something was very, very, very, very missing.

He scrambled out of the shower, sliding on the wet tile and nearly falling and hitting his head on the toilet. He rushed into the next room, where a dirty mirror hung above an ancient sink. His hands fumbled frantically for the light switch, finally hitting it.

The light flooded the room, causing him to let out a lit cry in protest and cover his eyes. It was too bright for someone who had been up so few minutes. Slowly, he pried his fingers off his face one at a time, exposing his eyes gradually to the light. When he finally pried the last finger off his face and looked at himself in the mirror, his shriek was so loud that birds on the roof took flight in alarm.