"You don't need to be nervous." The person who'd come out with Ankh to the first show his agent had booked had been introduced to him as his manager, to which he'd said he could manage himself just fine and didn't take instructions from anyone.
The manager had started to frown at that before carefully smoothing out his – or was it her? Ankh hadn't been able to tell whether the individual was male or female – lips into something resembling a smile. "This is a slightly different environment than what you might be used to."
Ankh rolled his eyes at the statement that he might be nervous, but truth be told, there was a fluttering sensation just below his ribs. It felt familiar in a way that he couldn't quite place, and if he hadn't known better he would almost have said he was reacting to the presence of another Greeed. His manager looked at him sympathetically.
"Butterflies?"
"Maybe," Ankh muttered. There were more people in the venue than he was used to seeing, near the upper limit of what he'd specified was acceptable as long as he was performing primarily because he liked it and not because he thought it would bring him something material. While he wasn't a main event – not even close – it was still something for which he found himself oddly unprepared.
"That's perfectly normal," his manager said, pulling the tie around her – his? – neck straight. "Go on, you'll be fine."
"Oh, you have no idea," Ankh said.
Hina was hovering in the hallway outside; Ankh slipped out before he was actually supposed to walk into what passed for a stage in that particular location. He was somewhat surprised to see not only the detective with her, but also Goto and Satonaka.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. He'd known Hina was showing up; he hadn't been able to talk her out of it.
"Break a leg," Goto said, which was no answer at all.
"Are you nervous?" Hina asked, and he growled. She laughed softly.
"Ankh, I'm proud of you," the detective said, and that almost made Ankh walk out of the building right then and there. The detective had no right to stake that sort of claim on him, had no business taking any sort of ownership for what Ankh did.
"Sure," he said, because if he didn't say anything at all, they'd all start making faces at him.
"Look for us, okay?" Hina said, and Ankh nodded. Whatever else Hina might have tried to say was forestalled by his manager rushing out into the hallway and all but bodily moving him toward the stage.
The butterflies did not abate throughout his set. Ankh refused to acknowledge that they were there, that simply the presence of a group of humans watching him – or at least aware of him – was going to make him feel anything resembling nerves. The fact that the people he might have considered his family were among them had nothing to do with anything, he repeated to himself more than once. It wasn't until close to the end of his set that the sensation bloomed into certainty that something was very, very wrong.
Ankh was less than thirty seconds away from the end of his final piece when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what he felt was not nerves, or butterflies, or any other emotional reaction. He could feel the unmistakable presence of a Yummy, and he couldn't identify its type. Whether or not he could tell before seeing the Yummy, to be fair, had always been chancy at best, but this had an unfamiliar flavor to it.
Without finishing the song, Ankh darted off the stage. The guitar went into its case; someone would pick it up, or they wouldn't. It was precisely as unimportant as his manager staring at him with wide worried eyes and asking him pointless questions. He dodged any attempts at questions and made for the door. He'd seen a Ride Vendor a block away, the quickest way to get to where he could feel the Yummy.
"What are you up to," he muttered. It had to the Foundation; there was no other possible source for Greeed to revive, or worse, to be made anew. Whether the Yummy had escaped or deliberately been set free, Ankh was furious that the Foundation had been stepping on his territory.
The Ride Vendor was exactly where Ankh had remembered seeing it, and even its rapid transformation from machine to motorcycle was too slow. Ankh threw his leg over it, hearing it roar to life. He hadn't heard anyone behind him, and startled badly when he felt an arm slide around his waist.
"What?" He jerked his arm back, reflexively, only to find his elbow caught in an iron grip.
"I'm going with you," Hina said, settling behind him on the bike.
"I'm not going to protect you," he said. "You're going to have to take care of yourself."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," she said. "Besides, I'm the one that has the Driver and Scanner."
"How did you know what I –" Ankh shook his head. Didn't matter. "Hold on."
Ankh couldn't find the Yummy, when he reached the underpass where he knew it was. He pulled up on the bike, turning it off and slowly climbing onto the ground. He could feel the Yummy, but he couldn't see it. He turned in a slow circle, searching the shadows and the pools of light under the streetlamps. Hina handed him the Driver, and he put it on, still trying to find the Yummy.
Whatever the Yummy was, it was moving. Ankh shook his head when Hina handed him the TaToBa combination, and put his own cores in the Driver instead. He had the scanner in his right hand when he felt a pebble hit his shoulder and finally thought to look up. Gray-white fur filled his vision as he pushed Hina to one side and flung himself to the other, and a massive spider hit the ground right where he'd been standing. The Scanner fell out of his hand and bounced away, and Ankh barely managed to roll and come up on his feet.
The spider, now that he could see it clearly, wasn't entirely a spider. It clearly had an arachnid base, but its joints were all wrong, and the patchy armor plating spotting its long pale fur looked unhealthy. Its eight eyes were deep crimson, glinting with a glow that Ankh didn't think came from the streetlight behind him, and each of its legs was sharp. The pointed tips glistened as it moved warily back and forth, unable to decide whether he or Hina was a more appropriate target.
"Hina," Ankh said as quietly as he could, moving his mouth as little as possible. "Get to the Ride Vendor."
Whatever had made this Yummy, it had matured incredibly quickly, if he'd started feeling it when he'd felt what clearly hadn't been butterflies. It was going to give him a fantastic amount of Cell Medals. Ankh tried to look for the scanner out of the corners of his eyes, not paying any attention to whatever Hina's reply had been. If she knew what was good for her, she'd get on the bike and flee.
The scanner hadn't gone far; it was only a few meters to his right. Ankh moved slowly toward it, keeping his eyes locked on the spider. It shifted its weight toward him, talons clicking on what was left of the pavement. Ankh risked a glance at the Scanner, seeing the spider start to charge just as he started to look back. He dove for it, scrabbling for an agonizing half a second before his hands closed around the handle. The spider shot past him and skittered halfway up the embankment before checking its own momentum and starting back.
Ankh rose to his feet, Scanner in hand, and pulled it across the medals. The Driver sang, the glorious melody of TaJaDor ringing through the shadows, and Ankh felt the armor form itself around him. It burned the way fire never had, pain along every nerve ending. He barely felt it when the spider charged into him, knocking him into one of the concrete supports, but hitting the ground jolted him out of the sense of shock.
The spider was almost on top of him. Ankh flung fire at it, driving it back, the flames catching and burning the concrete. Hina screamed, and he realized he'd pushed it almost right towards her. He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled almost immediately. "Over here!" he shouted, voice hoarse, and he could see where Hina was, now. She ran to meet him halfway, the spider angling to intercept. Ankh spit flames at it again, catching it directly this time. Its fur caught fire and its armor glowed with heat, and it shrieked.
The sound pierced Ankh's ears, pushing into his brain, and he felt concrete digging into his cheek. That wasn't right, he was wearing Eiji's armor. It was gone, he realized distantly, and most of the pain had gone with it. He reached for the scanner again, but his hands wouldn't move. He could feel his fingers twitch as everything went dark, and then he felt hands that could only belong to Hina pulling him over onto his back before sensation faded into nothing.
Ankh woke up on something soft, too-warm air blowing past his face and sunlight directly in his eyes. It was almost silent, except for the vague noises of life in other parts of the building. Ankh maneuvered himself out of the too-bright light, shaking with the effort it took. That wasn't supposed to happen, not when he had enough Cell Medals. He could feel the Medals he'd absorbed, but they were inexplicably not enough to even let him move easily.
Ankh put that problem aside in favor of figuring out exactly where he was; the room was unfamiliar, with narrow windows lining the top of one wall and almost no furniture or other distinguishing features. All he could see out of the high windows was open sky. There were no blinds or shutters over the windows, all of which were wide open and presumably the source of the warm breeze drifting through the room. Ankh looked for a door and found one opposite the windows. The soft surface he'd woken on turned out to be some sort of thick mat laid out on the floor.
Leaning against the wall, Ankh looked at the door. It seemed both impossibly far away and claustrophobically near, and the edges of the odd slabs of plant material making up the floor wavered around him. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyelids until his vision steadied and his breathing slowed. Greeed did not panic, he told himself. Unfamiliar surroundings were no reason for discomfort.
Ankh used the wall to lever himself upright, leaning on it again. Something glistened along his arm, and he glanced down at himself. The glitter he'd worn for his performance, whenever that had been, was still smeared over his skin, but his clothing had been replaced with soft, loose pants and a matching shirt. His feet were bare, and that was oddly disorienting. Still using the wall as a prop, Ankh made his way across the room to the door, nearly tripping over the edge of the wooden flooring around the door itself, and pushed it open.
The hallway outside was a distinct contrast to the quiet of the room; it was brightly and fluorescently lit, and there was a steady if sparse stream of unfamiliar people walking up and down. After a moment, Ankh could see identification badges marking them as Kougami Foundation employees, which at least told him where he was. None of them paid attention to him, beyond a startled glance or two.
"Ankh!" came a voice from the direction he wasn't looking.
Startled, Ankh let go of the doorframe and backed up. He was feeling better, the longer he stood, his thoughts clearing enough to recognize the voice. Kougami had sent Satonaka down for him. She strode through the door, paused at the edge of the wooden floor to take off her shoes, and then circled around him.
"You're alive," she said, and then produced a stack of clothing from an alcove he'd somehow managed to miss while inspecting the room. "Get dressed."
It did not escape Ankh's attention that Satonaka's eyes narrowed when he put on his shoes, but by the time he finished dressing, he'd recovered enough that he didn't particularly care. There was still a leftover unsteady sensation in his joints, as if they'd give out if he moved too quickly, but he was at least confident of his ability to walk down a hallway. The Cell Medals he'd absorbed felt right again, energy flowing from them to his Cores.
Satonaka led him out into the hallway, pausing just long enough to put her shoes back on in a display of ridiculous affectation, and then walked off impatiently as though he were expected to follow. Not being entirely sure of where in the Foundation he was, Ankh did; with all the attention she was paying him, he could leave as soon as he saw something familiar.
The first part of the building he recognized turned out to be their destination. Ankh stared at the thumbprint scanner in front of the laboratory he visited semi-regularly with a sense of betrayal, but Satonaka had already opened the door and ushered him through it before he thought to simply walk away. It was possible that he wasn't quite as recovered as he thought he was, from whatever had happened.
It occurred to Ankh that he wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten to the Foundation; the last thing he remembered, now that he thought about it, was standing on a stage.
Fujii was the only other person in the room when Ankh entered. He could see Satonaka nodding out of the corner of his eye as she said, "He's all yours" and vanished out the door without so much as a word to him.
"What is going on?" Ankh said, or tried to say. His voice caught in his throat, and he had to cough to clear it and try again.
"Um." Fujii looked between Ankh and something on the ceiling. Ankh stalked forward, intending to grab the man by the throat, but Fujii slipped out of his reach easily and came back with a stethoscope. "Let me see how you're doing first, okay?"
Ankh glared at him, but for once, Fujii didn't respond to the implicit threat, and insisted on poking and prodding at him with a variety of things that Ankh did not recognize. It didn't help that halfway through Fujii's ridiculous semi-torture routine, Ankh found himself needing to sit down and stay down.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Fujii asked eventually.
"I don't have to answer you," Ankh said, although not remembering how he'd gotten to the Foundation was really starting to bother him.
"Ankh," Fujii said, and it was the first time he'd ever actually addressed Ankh by name. "You had an, um, experience and did not react well. The Foundation would like to find out as much as possible about what happened."
"You tell me what's going on, then," Ankh said.
"I will," Fujii said patiently. "But first I need to know what you remember."
Ankh grimaced. If he was going to admit to anyone what he couldn't remember, at least he could tell a familiar face; even knowing that it was a manipulative ploy to get information out of him, he actually felt better with Fujii in the room than he would have with someone he didn't know. "Fine," he said, and told Fujii.
"You don't remember leaving the venue," Fujii said.
Ankh shook his head, drawing his knees up against his chest and resting his forehead on them.
"You were chasing an escaped Yummy," Fujii said carefully. "You don't remember that?"
Ankh thought about it, but he didn't even remember leaving the stage. "No," he said.
"You transformed into OOO." Fujii paused, and Ankh looked up. "The suit was red," Fujii added. "All three sections."
"TaJaDor," Ankh said. "I used TaJaDor." That made some sort of sense; the first time he'd used the driver, TaToBa had been painful. Using his own medals should have been easier. He suddenly felt a moment of panic; if he'd used his own medals in the OOO Driver, had he reabsorbed them? He pressed a hand to his chest, concentrating on the feeling of his own Cores. They were all there, all six of them that were still intact. Ankh relaxed, and then heard Fujii speaking.
"Are you all right? Ankh. Ankh!"
"Stop panicking," Ankh said, shooting the other man an annoyed glare.
"Don't do that." Fujii shone a light in his eyes, again, and Ankh batted it away. "You collapsed not long after transforming into TaJaDor," he said. "Mr. Goto arrived on the scene with the Birth Driver and dispatched the Yummy. He was then instructed to bring you here."
"You know," Ankh said, out of a perverse desire to be obnoxious and unhelpful, "I thought Goto didn't work for you anymore. I thought he'd gone back to the police department."
"He's a consultant," Fujii said. "The department loans him to us."
"Of course they do," Ankh said, but he wasn't paying attention to what he was saying. It was absurd; no matter how Eiji had reacted to the physical stresses of transforming into OOO, Ankh should have been able to compensate for it. Eiji had gotten better at withstanding the physical stresses besides – by the end, it was only the purple Cores that had drained him so thoroughly. "Can I leave now?"
"The Foundation has called you a car," Fujii said. "It's waiting by the front door."
Ankh stood, only wobbling slightly, and then paused. "How long?" he asked.
"How long?" Fujii repeated.
"How long ago was the fight?" Ankh said.
Fujii hesitated, and Ankh glared. It was a little more effective the second time around, because Fujii got noticeably paler. "Four days," he said. "It's Tuesday."
"Tuesday." Ankh stalked out the door, hearing Fujii sigh in relief behind him.
The memories wouldn't come back; all Ankh got was the phantom sensation of fire ghosting painfully over his skin and an equally painful grip across his shoulders. He climbed out of the Foundation car more unsettled than when he'd gotten in.
The Izumi apartment was empty when Ankh entered, still and quiet in a way he hadn't realized he sorely needed. He leaned against the door for a full minute, just breathing, before going out to the balcony and staring down at the city. The oppressive heat drove him back indoors after only a few minutes, but at least the view had gone a long way toward restoring his equilibrium. The sight of the guitar propped up in the corner of the living room brought another trickle of relief; he hadn't known what had happened to it, either, although it seemed less important in the wider scheme of things.
Ankh didn't mean to fall asleep again, but he woke to Hina settling a completely unnecessary blanket over his shoulders and caught her by the wrist.
"Welcome home," Hina said.
"Whatever." Ankh shrugged the blanket off, sitting up from where he'd inadvertently slid down. "I'm back," he said, not looking at her. Hina grinned widely at that.
"I'm glad you're okay," she said, eyes searching his face for something.
Ankh stared at her for a moment, long enough that Hina started to fidget and then blush. "I need to ask you something," he said, the words not coming easily. If he could trust anyone, he could trust Hina.
Startled, Hina nodded and sat next to him. She took his hand, carefully, and squeezed it with more gentleness than he'd ever seen her use. "Anything," she said.
"What." His voice failed, and he cleared his throat. "What happened on Friday?" he asked.
"Oh," Hina said. "You don't remember."
Ankh made himself shake his head. Hina was not going to pounce on a display of vulnerability. Hina was not going to slip through the gaping holes in his defenses. Hina was not going to stab him in the metaphorical – or literal – back. "Just the performance," he said.
Hina verified Fujii's depiction of events, but added something Fujii had left out. The Yummy hadn't been avian, which meant it hadn't been his. It had been an arachnid, and Kougami had grown himself another Greeed.
"You're sure," he couldn't help saying.
"I know a spider when I see one," Hina said, sharply for her. She hesitated, biting her bottom lip. "I was worried," she said after a moment. "You wouldn't wake up."
"What happened to the Medals after Goto destroyed it?" Ankh asked.
Hina stared at him for several seconds, face warring between indignation and annoyance. "He collected them," she said.
"Of course." Ankh rolled his eyes. Since he hadn't been the one to dispatch the Yummy, and it hadn't technically been his Yummy to begin with, the Foundation wasn't going to let him have the Medals.
"There's something else," Hina said, and then she paused yet again.
"Out with it," Ankh said impatiently when she showed no signs of speaking.
"Are you sure," she said, and lapsed into silence again.
"Hina." Ankh resisted the urge to either shake the words out of her or just walk off.
"Are you sure Eiji is the only one who can use the OOO Driver?" Hina asked.
"Why?" Ankh demanded.
"It's just." Hina twisted her hands together. "When the spider – you threw fire at it, and I tried to catch you when you fell over, after that, and the armor disappeared. But I felt something, when it vanished, and that's why I dropped you. I'm sorry I dropped you," she added, the words falling over each other.
Ankh waved it off, eyes narrowed. "You think you can transform into OOO?"
Hina spread her hands. "I don't know. But I took the Driver, and it felt tingly."
"You have the Driver." Ankh identified the feeling spreading through his chest as relief; the Foundation didn't have it. He felt that he should have thought of it earlier, but he'd been too concerned about whether or not he still had his Cores, and then about his missing memories.
Hina dug it out of her purse. "I haven't let it go," she said.
Ankh considered for a moment. "Try," he said.
"Try what?"
"Transforming," he said impatiently. "Try it now."
"In here?" Hina looked around doubtfully.
"On the balcony, then." She had his little case of medals, too, and he pulled two out of it. After a moment's thought, he handed her one of his own Cores, giving her the makings of TaToBa. She looked at it, and then at him, with wide eyes.
"What are you waiting for?" He heaved himself to his feet, pleased to discover that it was easier than he'd thought it would be, and pulled her with. "Go on."
Hina looked doubtfully between the Driver and the Medals in her hand, and Ankh pushed her out onto the balcony. He suspected that if she'd resisted even a little, he would have failed, but she went along with the attempt willingly enough.
"It doesn't seem right," she said. "Eiji." She stopped abruptly.
"It's not like he would care if someone else used the Driver," Ankh said, which was true. Eiji would probably be furious if Ankh pointed Hina toward a Yummy, OOO armor or no, but he didn't have to say that part of it. Eiji could say it all on his own, if he ever decided to stop sleeping.
"If you're sure," Hina said.
Ankh considered for less than half a second before taking her by the shoulders. "Hina," he said, trying to come across as earnest and empathetic. It was hard. "I can't use the Driver. Something's wrong with me, or with Eiji. If there's a new Greeed running around, we need OOO to be able to do something about it." He was forgetting something. Oh, right. "Goto can't be expected to handle things all on his own, particularly not if the Foundation made the Greeed. Goto needs the backup."
Hina was looking at him oddly, and Ankh wondered if he'd overplayed his hand. He wanted the new Greeed dead, before it ruined his territory, and it was looking like he was going to need help doing that. Eiji was taking more of his energy than he'd anticipated. It didn't occur to him to simply leave Eiji behind.
"Ankh," Hina said, her eyes growing suspiciously bright, and Ankh failed to fend off what he was sure was a literally bone-cracking hug.
"Air," he gasped. Eiji still needed to breathe.
Hina let go, jumping back. "I'm sorry," she said.
Ankh was too busy not suffocating to answer with more than a handwave in her general direction. "Just," he said finally, managing to take a full breath and feeling his ribs twinge. "Try to transform, would you."
"Right." Hina held the Driver up to her waist. "How do I – oh!" The belt shot out of the Driver, securing itself around Hina and pulling in tight. Ankh felt that was a good sign.
"Put the medals in," he reminded her, and she slid them in one at a time. The Driver reacted, the standby tones sounding. "And the Scanner." It was hooked on to the side of the belt, and she fumbled it slightly before detaching it and sliding it across the Driver. The sound of the Medals registering with the Scanner rang in Ankh's ears.
"Transform?" Hina said, almost drowned out by the Driver singing the transformation melody. The whirling pattern of Medals Ankh had seen around Eiji so many times spun around Hina as the melody played itself out, and finally cleared to show OOO standing incongruously on the Izumi balcony.
"Well, it worked," Ankh said.
Hina looked a little different than Eiji had, in the armor; she had less mass than he did and a little more of a sense of grace and fragility. No one who had ever seen Eiji in the armor would mistake her for him, or at least no one who'd seen him up close. But she looked similar enough that Ankh was reasonably sure no one would be able to tell at even a moderate distance.
"Wow," Hina said, looking down at herself. "This is… this is…" She turned her hands over, looking at the claws folded across her forearms, and then running her hands over the shield covering her chest. "It's so strange," she said.
"The next time a Yummy escapes, you get to come with me to kill it," Ankh said, and Hina's head snapped up.
It was a little odd, having OOO's green eyes fixed on him in a way they hadn't been for so long, but Ankh found it almost calming. "You want me to fight?" Hina said, but she didn't sound dismayed by the prospect. She sounded skeptical, and almost excited.
"I don't know why else you'd want to use the Driver," Ankh snapped. Briefly, he wondered how Hina's ridiculously inhuman strength would affect the armor. Then, somewhat more worryingly, he wondered how Hina's total ineffectiveness in anything resembling a fight would affect her performance, armor or no armor. "Maybe we should practice," he added.
Ankh had nightmares that night, images that stayed with him clearly after he woke although he almost never remembered his dreams. If he even dreamed in the first place; he wasn't entirely sure on that score. This time, though, the visions were painfully sharp to his mind's eye, even after he woke and the pale ceiling came into focus above him.
Of course the images were easy to remember, he told himself. Most of them had actually happened. He'd dreamed of the first OOO, the king, the genius or lunatic or visionary or whatever one might have called him, the one who'd created the belt and the driver and the Greeed in the first place. The one who'd betrayed Ankh, who'd tried to absorb all the medals and become a god and ended up sending himself into oblivion and Ankh, in pieces, eight centuries into the future.
It had been a long time since the memories of the king had been so vivid. Ankh scrubbed his hands across his face, if only because there was no one to see how slightly they were shaking. Once in a while, he thought he should have seen it coming, known that if the king was willing to betray the rest of his creations, he'd be willing to betray Ankh as well. But he'd thought he was special, that he was the one who knew more than everyone else, the one who deserved everything.
Eiji had been different, because deep down, he hadn't wanted anything. He acted on behalf of others, but never for his own good or gain. Ankh had thought, once in a while, how lucky he was that the person who'd been present when the Driver was unsealed was perhaps the only person who wouldn't have been driven insane by it; if controlling use of the Medals depended on the user not having any desires, anyone else would have gone down the same path the king had.
Ankh knew, suddenly, why he'd been having nightmares.
After all that work I went through, trying to talk myself into trusting Hina in the first place. The thought came unbidden and he pushed it away. It didn't matter if he couldn't trust Hina, as long as she could properly wear the belt. There might be some way to mitigate the effects of the medals, after all.
The detective was a hard man to pin down alone; if Ankh didn't know better, he'd think Izumi was actively avoiding him. He couldn't manage to get more than a few seconds alone with the man before Hina would show up, or the detective would have a perfectly good reason to leave, or Ankh himself would have a perfectly good reason to leave.
It wasn't that Ankh had that much free time to spare; the Foundation had made its own Greeed, and Ankh was going to kill it, but he couldn't kill it unless he could find it. It wasn't in the Foundation complex, of that much he was sure. He made a point of showing up at the lab at odd hours, to see if he could catch it, until he knew that it was somewhere else.
It took a while for someone to broach the topic of the new Greeed with him. Kougami had remained entirely silent on the matter, and Ankh refused to talk to the clearly crazy man about it. He'd expected it to come from Fujii, but Pedersen approached him just a little too casually. He looked up at her, for once annoyed that she was taller than he was. She was taller than almost everyone at the Foundation, to be fair, but at the moment, Ankh resented that he had to look up to meet her eyes.
"So," she said, and twisted her hands in an uncharacteristic display of nerves. If she'd been da Costa, Ankh was fairly sure she would have been actively shaking and wringing her hands. "About –"
"I don't care," Ankh interrupted her. "The existence of a new Greeed hasn't changed my contract."
"Oh," Pedersen said, her hands stilling in surprise. "I, uh, that's good."
"Then, unless there are plans to not give me what I want, which, by the way, I have been getting, why don't you not worry about what I'm going to do about something that I don't care about." He smirked at her, a shark's grin that felt wrong on Eiji's face.
He waited a moment for her to parse that sentence, spoken in English rather than Norwegian, because he still had at least part of a small, petty desire to make someone squirm. She all but fled once she'd figured it out, and Ankh watched her go with his predatory smile fading to something bland and inoffensive. For some reason, that made the rest of the research team – who'd been watching the entire exchange while pretending not to – more nervous. Ankh rolled his eyes and left.
The other drain on Ankh's time was his manager; Ankh spent enough time preparing for and playing in locations scattered throughout the general area to keep anyone distracted. It had taken him a while, but he'd finally pinned down said manager as exactly that – a distraction. The agency the manager allegedly worked for existed, and was more or less as advertised; it was trying to get off the ground by representing a wide variety of artists who might or might not become popular enough to attract other high-quality talent.
The problem was that the agency turned out to be owned by a shell corporation, which was owned by another shell corporation, which was in and of itself owned and managed by a subsidiary of the Kougami Foundation. Ankh hadn't had the resources to figure that out on his own, nor did he trust anyone in his immediate vicinity when it finally occurred to him that it had been far too easy to fall into what amounted to steady work as a musician. He'd gone to Philip.
"No, you can't tell Shotaro," he'd said, using the disposable phone he'd bought out of a sense of paranoia. If the Kougami Foundation was in fact attempting to manipulate his life as a distraction, who knew what else they were doing. "I just need you to find out something for me."
"It wouldn't happen to be about heat shields, would it?" Philip had said.
"What? No."
"Oh." Philip had actually sounded disappointed at that. "Because the issue of functionality and weight, when you consider the effort it takes to get something into orbit to begin with –"
"Philip," Ankh had interrupted, and had then pushed down a sense of being ridiculous and explained that he thought something wasn't right about his manager. And then he'd had to explain that he had a manager, and then Philip had thought Shotaro would enjoy a concert, and then Ankh had nearly screamed in frustration. "You can't tell him about this," he'd said.
"Oh, there are posters, I just didn't think that was actually you," Philip had replied.
"Can you do it or not?"
Philip had confirmed it, Ankh had promised to send payment, and Philip had insisted on said payment being information about the seedy underbelly of the entertainment industry. Ankh had told him he didn't know a damn thing about any such thing, and Philip had sounded so disappointed that Ankh had ended up somehow inviting both of them over to the Izumi apartment following one of his performances.
None of that got him any closer to actually finding the Greeed, but Ankh was nothing if not patient. He'd learned to be patient. The Greeed would give itself away sooner or later, and then he'd be ready for it. His more immediate problem was keeping Hina from drowning in the power of OOO.
Ankh finally got his chance to talk to the detective when Hina dragged them to another summer festival. He'd avoided the previous one, which had had something to do with dancing and lanterns in boats and the souls of the dead; there was no one who was gone that he cared to remember – Eiji isn't dead, whispered his mind – and Hina and her brother could honor their parents all on their own.
The second time he couldn't get out of it; Hina stood in front of him on a night she knew he wasn't playing, wearing a yukata, with the detective behind her, wearing the stubborn expression that told him that she was not above physically manhandling him out the door if necessary. Ankh sighed and followed her.
Ankh forgave Hina for dragging the both of them all the way over to Ueno for the tail end of what was still an overcrowded street fair, complete with stalls, lights, and the occasional fireworks, when she put what turned out to be a chocolate-covered banana on a stick in his hands. It was the best thing he'd tasted since possessing Eiji. "More," he said, when he finished the first one, and Hina laughed delightedly.
Two bananas-on-a-stick later, Ankh was much less cranky about the summer festival and Hina had been dragged off by a group of classmates with a promise to catch up with them in a little while. Ankh licked chocolate off one finger and caught the detective looking at him almost fondly. Ankh glared, and the expression vanished, the detective returning Ankh's stare in equal measure.
"If," Ankh said, and paused. "How do you keep humans from giving in to their desires?"
He was hit by a sudden flash of memory; telling Eiji, when they'd just barely met, that humans would always give in. Eiji had insisted that people could win out over their own baser wants, but Ankh had yet to find the human that would prove Eiji wrong. Even Eiji, when he'd finally found something he wanted, had devoted himself to it.
The detective's cold calm gave way to surprise, and then a wary suspicion. "Why?" he asked.
Ankh gestured around them, at the laughing mass of people. "They do things that – that won't help them in the long run," he said. "They get lost in what they desire. Eiji…" Something caught in his throat, and he had to look away and swallow it back down. "Eiji thought – told me that humans don't always lose to what they want." He glanced back to see Izumi wearing an unreadable expression.
"Ankh," the detective said, and half-reached out toward him before letting his hand fall back. "It's not really that simple," he said instead.
"What do you mean?" Ankh turned to face him, stopping in the middle of the walkway.
"Here." The detective gestured him toward a quieter corner. "In order to not do or have something you want, there has to be something you want more."
Ankh tilted his head to the side. "What do you mean?"
The detective sighed, scrubbing his hand through his hair. It stood up in a shock, and it was odd for a moment to be standing across from a face that he'd once been used to seeing in the mirror. "Let me use a simple example," he said. "I might want to stay home and spend time with my sister, right?"
Ankh nodded; that was a fairly common thing to want, as far as he could tell.
"But I also want to provide her with a safe home, and make sure that she's being taken care of while she's in school. It's more important to me that she have somewhere to come home to than that I get to spend a lot of time with her. So I go to work." The detective spread his hands out. "Does that make sense?"
"Physical needs are more important?" Ankh hazarded.
"Not exactly." The detective glanced around. "A person has to figure out what's most important. Sometimes we want things that conflict with each other."
That was fascinating; Ankh hadn't thought that might be the case. As far as he had always been able to tell, humans wanted things and then went for them.
"If that happens, sometimes the person will go for what's easiest, and sometimes they'll decide that the harder choice is the one they want more." The detective shoved his hands in his pockets. "It's tricky and complicated."
"But it comes down to what you want the most," Ankh said slowly. "Even when that means doing something difficult." It might have been understandable after all; he'd wanted to be alive, and he'd gotten it, but more than that, he'd wanted Eiji to survive at the end. He'd wanted Eiji to survive with his heart and soul intact, and not let the purple Cores burn him up from the inside out.
"Why do you ask?" Izumi said, deceptively mildly.
"Because humans are strange," Ankh shot back. "And nothing any of you do makes any sense."
"Right," said the detective, and gestured for Ankh to follow him. "Let's go see if we can't keep my sister out of trouble."
"Trouble finds her like a magnet," Ankh muttered. "You can't keep her out of it. The best you can do is minimize it."
Izumi surprised him by laughing out loud.