Note-y-note-y: Ban and Ginji are coming… in the next chapter! Like most things in life, Ginji's reaction is worth waiting for.

6-6

Akabane stayed in the next day, lying flat on his back until the Artist called him with the finished order. He had stayed in because his only pair of fitting pants remained the pants that required a good ten minutes of pulling, panting, and praying to actually get onto his body. Hopefully though, after her proved that he understood what taking a transporting job as a woman entailed, he would be granted his masculine body back, so he was in no hurry to rush out and buy any more women's clothing.

He stopped and studied himself in his bathroom mirror, once again cupping his breasts curiously in his hands as he stood half-naked before the bathroom mirror. Then, he spun around and looked at his butt. They were a rather nice little combo. He would have admired them on someone else. On himself, however, he could not wait to get rid of them.

He shook his head, wondering if perhaps he was going insane. He moved back into the main room of his apartment and put his shirt on, once again buttoning it all the way up to the very top button before putting his tie on. He felt no need to put himself on display, no matter what gender he was currently pretending to be.

At the very least the new clothes let him step out to the Artist's studio with more confidence than he'd had the previous day. It was hard to walk with both pride and one hand on your waist line to prevent your pants from slipping down around your knees.

The Artist had set out practice dummies for him, which Akabane happily tested his new blades out on. The size adjustment and new design had done wonders; the new scalpels cut with every bit as much accuracy and speed as his old ones. The Artist was delighted with Akabane's glee at the way the new blades danced, and willingly forgave Akabane for forcing him into such a rush order.

For once in his life, Akabane consciously decided not to be late for a job. He did not want to make a bad impression at his first job as a woman. Mainly, he did not want them to think his usual habit of being fashionably late had more to do with what was or wasn't hanging between his legs than his demeanor. His general attitude had always been that if you could financially afford the services of Dr. Jackal, you could afford the time investment to wait for him to show up when he wanted to.

As fate would have it, the clients weren't ready for him when he did arrive. They fumbled and explained that they'd heard rumors that Dr. Jackal was always late, so they'd given him an earlier time than they actually wanted him there. Akabane rolled his eyes in frustration, which they did not see because he'd found a way to make his hat fit again. He should have known that the one time he actually showed up on time for a job would be the one time they would not be ready for him.

He sat around with the clients, his legs dangling off the end of the railing he was perched on top of. They clients tried to make polite conversation, but it was hard to consider any conversation polite when they talked at his chest instead of his face. Thus, he was grateful when by pure coincidence the drive also happened to show up earlier than expected.

He placed the suitcase containing the delivery at his feet, adjusting his seatbelt. After a bit of wrangling, he decided that straight down between the breasts was probably the best way to arrange the belt. The driver, a non-descript looking middle aged man in a business suit, glanced at him only once as they got under way. Akabane was grateful that the driver seemed to be a pro, able to pay attention to where he was going instead of what was in the seat beside him.

The two sat in silence. Akabane was not big on talking while on the job, and neither was the driver it seemed. A light rain had sprung up during the day, forcing them to use the windshield wipers. The wipers a "Thud-Swish-Thud-Swish" sound as they danced across the glass, filling the car the empty car with the sound of their motion. Akabane adjusted his legs, feeling his foot thud against the protective case.

"Do you mind if I turn on the radio?" the driver finally asked, breaking the silence.

"I do not mind," Akabane answered, looking out the window at the other cars passing in the rain. The clients had said they likely would not encounter interceptors until the return trip, if they did at all, but he found himself bored and wishing that something at least vaguely interesting would happen.

The driver spun through the stations, seemingly unable to settle on something he liked. Akabane found his indecisiveness annoying. He grabbed the control dial for himself, switching it over to a classical music station before resting back in the seat. He wondered if they were heated seats, as they did seem awfully warm considering that the rain had made the temperature outside plummet.

The first switch went off without a problem, as did the first half of the drive back. Akabane yawned. "It always seems longer on the way back, does it not?" he asked the driver, stretching his arms out.

"Yes… it does…" the driver said hesitantly, pulling onto an off-ramp.

Akabane sat fully up in his seat, body rigid. "You made a mistake. This is not the turn to get back to the client."

The driver raised a gun point-blank to Akabane's head, grinning. "No mistake here," he smiled. Akabane looked out the front windshield and saw two dark blue vehicles waiting for them in the emergency pull-off zone on the side of the little mountain road. He felt like an idiot for not realizing that the driver had actually been an interceptor. Then again, the client hadn't recognized him as one either, and they'd been the ones to hire him. They were far more at fault than he was.

The car pulled to a stop. The driver gestured to the door with his gun. "Get out of the car. Leave the delivery."

Willing to play along for the sake of having a less boring night, Akabane stepped calmly out of the car with his arms raised in the air. The driver joined him, still tightly holding the gun. "I never imagined the transporter would be a gorgeous babe," he smirked. He pressed the barrel of the gun into Akabane's back, between his shoulder blades. "Let's lose the coat, sweetness."

This was the part Akabane practically lived for. They'd search him for weapons, declare him completely helpless, and only then would he slaughter them. He relished the moment when their eyes switched from an expression of superiority to an expression of realizing they were hopelessly screwed in so many ways. Willingly, he slid the new coat off and let it drop to the ground.

The driver pushed the gun closer further into Akabane's back while one of the other interceptors ran and snatched up the coat, throwing it off to the side of the road. Akabane could practically see the dirty thoughts written on the man's face as he patted the female body down for weapons. "She's unarmed," he shouted.

This was the point where Akabane took his invitation to dazzle them. He zipped away from the muzzle of the gun, appearing behind the would-be searcher. The searcher let out a cry and dived into the dirt, barely saving himself from taking a hit in the back.

The driver attempted to shoot only to have the muzzle of his gun fall to the ground, neatly sliced right off the gun with a single clean cut. He let out a cry and dropped the gun, clawing at the car door in an attempt to get it open and drive away.

Two men tried to jump out of the cars to join their brothers, but Akabane caught the action with the corner of his eye and relieved them of their ability to breathe before they hit the ground. The searcher, lying on the ground, stopped trembling suddenly and cried out "I know where she's keeping the knives!"

He leapt up, catching Akabane by surprise as he was busy slicing the muzzle off the gun of a man who had come running from around the side of one of the cars. There was an awkward moment where the world seemed to go into slow-motion mode. Akabane saw the man flying at him. The man saw Akabane's blade coming down in his direction. The man's hands flew out, gripping their intended target, right as Akabane's blade met with his throat. He continued to fly forward, the world still seeming to behave at one tenth its normal speed. Well, his body continued to fly forward. His head, impacted by the sheer force of Akabane's slice, was flying off in another direction. The dead man's hands, however, had found their target and tightened around it, even in death. Needless to say, the force of an adult male, flying through the air, versus the ability of buttons on a cheaply made Gothic shirt, ended without a win for the buttons.

The front of the shirt, where he'd suspected Akabane had been hiding the scalpels under his chest, ended up flying open in a spray of buttons. Caught momentarily off-balance by the weight of the flying body, Akabane landed on his shapely ass while bullets flew over his head. He rolled beneath the car, bullets peppering the ground near him, using the car as cover to launch scalpels at the remaining interceptors. He continued rolling until he rolled out the other side, catching the driver by surprise. The driver barely had time for his face to twist into a contorted mask of surprise before Akabane introduced him to his signature J move, sending bits of the driver rolling into the grass.

Akabane stood up, victorious but disappointed. He'd hardly even worked up a sweat on that fight even though they'd been heavily armed with guns, and had confronted him with two car loads of people. He sighed to himself, kicking the bullet-deflated tires of the car. "They just do not make interceptors the way they used to," he commented dryly as he smashed in the passenger side window, reaching down to pick up the suitcase containing the delivery. If the car was shot to pieces, he would walk the delivery to the client. If rain, sleet, snow, and robots made out of washing machines couldn't stop him, neither could four flat tires.

Of course, Akabane's valiant sentiments about walking all the way back to the meeting place were ruined by the fact that in the silence, he realized the engine of one of the interceptor's cars was still purring. Embarrassedly pulling his hat over his face, he threw the suitcase into the passenger seat. Fortunately, it was an automatic. He hadn't driven a manual in years.

Despite the rain intensifying, the rest of the drive was as disappointingly uneventful as the first part had been. Akabane left the car a good two blocks from the drop point, less someone happen to remember seeing it there on the night its owner met a terrible fate. He adjusted his coat over his chest to hide the fact that his shirt was no longer in one intact piece before sliding out of the vehicle, landing in an ankle-deep puddle.

The rain was coming down in sheets by then, the wind whipping it sideways so that no inch of his body would be spared from dampness. Even holding the suitcase protectively over his head did nothing to keep him dry. By the time he made it from where he had abandoned the car to the client's address, the rain had penetrated even the twill fibers of the coat and soaked him thoroughly to the bone.

The servant who answered the door ordered Akabane to remain in the kitchen while he fetch the boss, lest Akabane drip on the expensive white-gray rugs. Akabane was unimpressed by the fact that the drop point was someone's house, as the gesture was rather unprofessional. Besides that, his clothes felt clammy from the rain, clinging to his body like a second skin.

The master of the house, whom recognized as one of his two nervous clients, and the servant appeared. Now that he could see the man in his lavish home and a rather ugly smoking jacket, Akabane could distinctly tell he was dealing with an underhanded CEO. Probably one who was new at being underhanded, for that matter. He'd narrowed it down to either that or a middle-rank yazuka trying to prove his worth by hiring an overpriced transporter for what the job would have actually required.

The servant handed Akabane a towel, which he put on his head. One meager little towel was not enough to fix how wet he was, but he did not wish to be rude by refusing the bit of offered hospitality. Even if his clients were not professionals, he was.

The client, meanwhile, was checking over the contents of the suitcase. "I'm glad the case was waterproof," he informed Akabane approvingly.

Akabane shrugged. "If you are pleased, then I will take my payment and quietly, quickly depart."

"You are soaked to the bone," the client said, his voice sounding as if he were only feigning concern. Akabane shifted uncomfortably when he noticed the client's eyes lingering hungrily on the drops of water running down his chest. "At least let me offer you hospitality and dry robes until this storm blows over."

"I am afraid it would be against my personal code of conduct to accept the hospitalities of a client." Definitely scum from the business world. The yazuka would have known better than to extend such a thing to someone like him.

"I absolutely insist! It's not safe for you to be driving out in that storm."

Akabane was unconvinced. "I have delivered through much worse than this." He'd never had a client so intent on letting death grace his doorstep before. He wondered if the female body should be blamed or if his client was just that inept.

"Come now, don't be so stubborn. If you refuse my hospitality I'll be terribly distressed, to the point where I might forget where I put the envelope with your pay in it."

Akabane's eyes narrowed into frighteningly little slits, his voice dropping into its most threatening tone. "I would recommend that you do not do that," he said, sliding a blade between his fingers and playing with it. "Should you wish for no one to get hurt."

The client finally backed down. "All right, I'll go get your payment," he whimpered, scampering off like a frightened child. Akabane wondered what all that had been about. He decided that he did not really care, when the client returned with the correct payment. He even got the half that was supposed to go to the driver, which reminded him…

"The driver was an interceptor. Why did you not notice that the man you hired to do the delivery was not the man who was in the car? Or were you foolish enough to have hired an interceptor in the first place?"

The client shuffled uncomfortably. "He looked the same with the glasses on," he muttered, sounding like he knew he was in trouble. The truth was, he'd been thinking about how lovely the transporter would look naked, rather than paying attention to the face of the man driving the car. "I'm a bit new at this hiring transporters thing."

"I could tell," Akabane replied, voice sounding icily sarcastic despite the fact that he wasn't trying to be so. "If that is all, I will see you next time you have a job for me." With that, he took his envelope and vanished back out into the storm.

He found himself almost wishing he had taken the offer, as traffic had crawled to a near standstill from the thunderstorm. He squinted, gripping the wheel tightly as the interceptor's car slid on a layer of water. The interceptors, it seemed, had worn their tires down to bare slicks. At least it seemed that way from the way the car was slipping about.

This was ridiculous. He couldn't drive in this! He decided to pull over and wait out the storm. He let the car hydroplane into the first open parking spot he found, accidentally hitting his head on the door when the wheels smacked into the curb. "Ouch," he muttered, rubbing his injured temple.

He happened to look up through the windshield, when he spotted something he had not expected to see. At first, he was shocked by the coincidence. Then, he smiled like the cat that had swallowed the canary. Finally, he just started laughing. "I do believe in karma, I do," he laughed. He'd been avoiding the Get Backers thus far, but it seemed fate wanted him to pay them a visit. For up ahead, glowing through the rain, he could see the fuzzy outline of the Honky Tonk's sidewalk sign.

---

At a distant location from Shinjuku, two women sat high in a tall, glass hotel complex. They had rented the highest floor with an opening. They enjoying the way the rain and lightning practically danced across the windows before their very eyes. Truly, it was best to be looking down upon the world.

Both women were tall, pale, and lean. Their features were so sharp and angular that it looked as though you might be able to cut glass with the edges of their bodies. It was obvious that both were older from the crow's feet and wrinkles decorating their faces, but they were well-preserved. That is to say, they looked as their useful selves had, but their youthful selves had been far less folded.

The green-haired, blue-eyed member of the pair tilted the wine in her glass. "So, tell me, what possessed you to use such a powerful spell on such an insignificant young man? I know it was not simple lesson teaching, as you have claimed," she said, smiling.

The red-haired, green-eyed member smiled and laughed, showing off the nearly fang-like teeth that she'd smiled with at the bar. "We came to Tokyo to look for someone with the proper blood to complete our spell, did we not?" she asked with a gentle laugh.

The green-haired one rose from her chair, eyes growing even harder as concern and anger traced her thin lips. "You found one?"

"Of course I did. When I smelled that man's blood at the bar, I knew I had found one. You could have seen me, sister. It took all my self-control not to leap up in joy."

The elder of the two sisters narrowed her eyes. "Have you forgotten, my little sister, that we need menstrual blood for the spell to work? A man is of no use to us, even if he has the proper blood."

"Only one in a million have the right blood for our spell. The chances of finding another one, male or female, are highly against us. So I cast a spell upon our young hero to give him the body of a woman."

"It doesn't matter if you've given him the illusion of being female; if at heart he is truly male it still won't work."

"Sister, sister, you always were the type to say 'It won't work' before you've heard the whole story." She produced a small, heart-shaped vial filled with red liquid. "If he willingly drinks this, the change will become permanent, and…"

"We can use his blood for our spell." She paused. "But it for it to be a willing drink, he has to want to remain female. How are we going to…?"

"Leave it to me, sister. Leave it to me," she smiled.

---

A/N: If you think I'm a pervert after reading this chapter, just read the Get Backers manga. You will discover that what I have written would fit perfectly into it. It seems to be a rule in the manga that any female fighter will lose no less than half her clothes in any one battle. Yeah, the guys have flying battle clothes syndrome too, but not quite as bad. And… well, just wait until you get to read next chapter.