Disclaimer: Ghost in the Shell belongs to Shirow Masamune. Beer belongs to the world. Hope you enjoy my non-profit deviation into the time between one and two of the movies.

Chapter 5: Pachinko Comeback

"Talking"
Thinking
(Cyberspeaking)
(Figure it out)

After we filed our reports, Aramaki sent us home for the evening. Deciding I wasn't quite ready to call it a night, I stopped at the Ishikawa Pachinko Palace and played a couple of pounds worth of virtual balls. I was having an uncommon amount of luck when a hand landed on my shoulder.

"Sir, we're going to have to ask you to leave." I stopped the game and took off my visor to look at the guard. A thin middle-aged man with shaggy light brown hair stared back at me, a shit-eating grin on his face. I stood and grabbed him in a bear hug.

"So you're finally off house arrest huh?" I looked around. "Of all the two-bit casinos in all the two-bit towns…

"It's Thursday. Poker night." Togusa held a six-pack of beer and a bag of pretzels. "Ishikawa said we were betting light tonight, so I brought snacks." He looked at me. "You coming?"

"Of course." I followed him upstairs and enjoyed watching Ishikawa's face as he answered the door.

I could tell he had not really expected company tonight. He had a ratty white wife-beater on over a pair of frayed boxers. His normally kempt beard was scruffy looking and his hair needed a quickie with a comb. As he saw Togusa, his face was split by a scary grin. "Togusa! You actually showed up. I figured since you had just gotten out of the hospital, you'd have more pressing things to do.

"Well, we did the pressing things until we just couldn't keep it up. Now we've been sent off to play poker with the boys as a way of getting us out of bed." Togusa blinked innocently and Ishikawa laughed hard as he ushered him in.

As he went to shut the door I put a hand out and stopped him. "Mind if I join?"

Ishikawa just stood there for a second. I'd never even seemed interested in poker. They'd invited me for over a year, and I'd turned them down every time. Suddenly he backed up. "Sure, you're always invited on poker night," he grinned maliciously. "Especially if you bring beer and cash." I entered and he shut the door behind us.

"I thought it was single-yen night." Togusa was already sitting at the table, a pile of pretzels and an open beer in front of him.

"It is, but I'm thinking Batou has some catch-up to do. We might make him play dollar exchange rate."

"Fine with me, I just won thirty thousand yen off of you downstairs. I can afford to lose a little."

"Thirty thousand?" Ishikawa was counting in his head. "Not too bad, I'll let you play single-yen with us this time. If you'd won forty though, all bets would be off."

The current exchange rate is about a hundred yen to the dollar. That means I walked away with about $300 in credit. I could cash that in at an exchange booth, but I occasionally like to play the game, it's mind-numbing.

"So, what's this I hear about a big op today?" Togusa had gotten up to retrieve another beer from the fridge. Our cyborg bodies might metabolize beer, making it harmless to us; but Togusa had no such weapon. Because of it, he drank a beer an hour to keep himself on a level playing field with his buddies. He told me once that on single-yen night, he got to splurge and have two an hour.

The reason I'd never joined poker night is because when I'm not at work, I don't like to think about work. I'm always available for emergency call-in, that's a requirement of the job, but I like my time away from work to be exactly that…time AWAY from work. So tonight I find myself playing single-yen poker with my co-workers, talking about…work.

Ishikawa put thirty yen in to match my bid. "Yeah, what the hell happened there at the end?"

"There was a fucking tank parked outside the building we were in. I don't know when it showed up, but it had TOC and we never saw it until it started blasting the hell out of our position. It had to be packing .577-450 Martin-Henry shells, or .585 Nyati's. It was blasting human sized holes in the buildings."

"Shit!" Togusa blinked at me. "Were you scared?"

I popped a pretzel before answering. "I didn't have time to be scared. Like I said, it was trying to help us find the River Styx before I ever saw it."

Ishikawa leaned forward, suddenly making a mental connection. "You never saw it? Then how did you know to get out of there?"

"I was told to run, so I did." I laid down a full house and waited to see if there was a royal flush.

Both guys had suddenly forgotten we were playing cards and were now staring at me. "Who told you to run?"

"Kusanagi."

Togusa put a pretzel in his mouth, crunching it without though. "The Major?"

"Yeah."

"Then why didn't she run out on her own?" Ishikawa reached over and grabbed a handful of pretzels, sticking one in his mouth like a cigarette. "She stated clearly in her report that she was still searching for evidence when you grabbed her around the waist and carried her out of the building like a sack of rice."

"I thought she had frozen after sending me the warning."

Ishikawa looked at me very seriously. "Nope. I'd think you are starting to hear voices, but I've suspected you've turned schizo for a while now."

"If it wasn't the Major, who was it?" Togusa glared at Ishikawa as his hand edged back over to the bag of pretzels. "Get your own, dammit!"

Ishikawa stood to get another beer. "I don't know, sounds like Batou has a guardian angel."

I grunted in acknowledgement. I hadn't been able to come up with a better solution.

ssssss

By 10pm, Togusa was dead to the world. I guess two beers on top of painkillers was more than his little body could handle. Ishikawa helped me get him in the car and I drove him home. When I arrived at his house, Miki was none too pleased to see her husband getting poured out of my car and being carried into the house. Although I'd talk trash to her if he were awake, that was a line I would never cross while he was unconscious. I just shrugged my shoulders. "Guess that warning about 'don't drink while taking this medicine' is true." At her worried look, I walked into the house and followed her to the bedroom, laying him gently on the mattress and pretending not to be jealous as she tenderly tucked him in and kissed his forehead.

"He really wasn't up to going out tonight, but I could tell he was beginning to have cabin fever. The doctor put him on limited movement, restricting anything he could do here to alleviate the boredom." A blush bloomed on her cheeks and I realized that Togusa had lied about his earlier 'exercise' as a way of fooling us into believing he was in better shape than he really was. "I didn't know he was going to stop on the way and pick up beer." She turned and looked at me, a worry line puckering the area between her friendly eyes.

"It was just a couple of beers, early in the evening. Two light beers won't do anything to him except make him wish he'd followed the warning on the medicine bottle."

She looked at me, really looked at me. "I guess you'd know. You became a cyborg one body part at a time."

"Not totally, more like over two or three times." I pulled her close, providing a strong comforting shoulder. "He's going to be okay. But he needed tonight in order for him to realize that he's going to be okay." She hugged me tightly, finally daring to believe, before pushing away and wiping tears from her cheeks.

"I guess so." She chuckled wetly and walked me back to the door.

A/N: Do you hate this story? I am beginning to think so. But then, no flames means it's either too bad to bother, or too boring and everyone who reads it is in a coma. Either way, if you've made it this far, thank you. Hope you have a great week, and I'll talk at you again next week. -TK