Ginji sat next to one of the Honky Tonk's windows, at the front of the café, watching the sluggish drizzle of rain outside. He had crossed his arms on the booth table and laid his head on them, mussing his uncharacteristically limp blond spikes.

"Oi, Ginji!" Ginji slowly rotated his head to see who had called him; his ears were so stuffy that he couldn't identify the speaker by their voice.

"Hi, Shido-kun," he replied, eyes landing on the beast-master's bandana. "What are you doing here?" he asked. To him, his words sounded like unintelligible mumblings, but Shido understood him.

"Meeting Hevn."

Ginji managed a weak smile. "Stealing our jobs again, Shido-kun? Don't tell Ban-chan." He straightened and rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"Snake Bastard get you sick?" Shido asked bluntly.

He raised his head enough to shake it, and immediately wished he hadn't. He lowered his head again and mumbled, "S'not his fault."

Shido swore. "And where is he now?"

Ginji's eyes were tearing up again, and not all of the moisture was related to the pressure in his sinusitis. "Working. He wouldn't take me with him." He coughed, and huffed miserably.

Shido's hard eyes softened slightly. "I've got to talk to Hevn, but after that, I'm planning on stopping by Madoka's before I get started on whatever it is Hevn's got for me. Madoka would be more than happy to have you, and you look like you could use some serious rest."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea. Ban-chan wouldn't be happy if he didn't know where I was."

Shido looked puzzled. "Ginji, Midou has the mobile phone, right?"

"Mmph," Ginji agreed.

"So you can call him," the beast-master prompted.

"I don't have a phone with me." He opened his mouth to yawn, but wound up sneezing instead. He did manage to sneeze into his arms, and not on Shido.

Shido ran through his hands through his hair, sighing with exasperation. "I do, Ginji. Paul-san has a phone. So do Natsumi-san and Rena-san."

"Oh. Right." His eyelids felt very heavy, and he nuzzled his face more deeply into his arms.

"Ginji… Ginji?" The lightning lord snored loudly in response. Shido sighed. "Hey, Paul-san?"

"I'll call Ban," Paul replied, waving a dismissive hand over his newspaper. "Go. Pour him into a real bed."

"Thank you." He stooped and dragged Ginji over his shoulders. A few customers started in surprise, but Paul smiled faintly and shook his head, and they settled back into their respective conversations.

Shido was nearly at the door when a small voice made him pause.

"Shido-san? Would it be alright if Rena and I came to visit Ginji-san this evening?"

"Only if you can stay for dinner," he replied matter-of-factly. "Otherwise Madoka would be upset with me for not inviting you."

Both of the pretty little waitresses bobbed their heads in acknowledgement, and Shido carried his old friend outside, where Madoka's new chauffeur was waiting to take him back to his not-so-temporary residence.

The drive to Madoka's was uneventful, and when he pulled up, the pretty girl was waiting on the verandah - the rain had let up somewhat - with Mozart, unseeing eyes turned to the sound of the car.

"Shido-san," she greeted him, a pleased glow in her cheeks. "And…" her brows lowered just a little as she considered, "Ginji-san?"

"He wasn't feeling well," Shido explained. He flushed a little, wondering if he had been too presumptuous in bring Ginji here. It wasn't his home, after all, and –

"In that case, I'll let the house-keeper know that we have a guest." Shido couldn't suppress a smile; he should have known better. "I'm sorry that you aren't feeling well, Ginji-san; is there anything I can do?" she asked, her tone earnest.

"He's sleeping," Shido informed her, hauling Ginji out of the car and into his arms.

"Oh. Please bring him inside, Shido-san. I think I know the perfect room for him." Kneeling, she scratched behind Mozart's ears and whispered something to him. Shido didn't quite catch her words, but understood it to be a request of some kind, judging from Mozart's happy compliance.

He followed the girl and her dog into a wing of the house he had rarely ventured into. It was immaculately clean, but had the artificial feel of a designer show-room, a place no one actually lived. Madoka led him through a drawing room outfitted in cumbersome red and gold fabrics and portentous, heavy oak furniture. She moved through the bulky furnishings with confidence behind Mozart, until she reached the far side of the room where a door stood beside a marble fireplace.

"I don't really like this part of the house." Madoka's tone was apologetic as she reached unerringly for the door handle. "It's just so…" she hesitated, "self-important." Shido had been thinking exactly the same thing, but he didn't say so.

Once again, Shido found that he couldn't suppress a smile. The door was evidently heavy; Madoka had to brace the whole of her slight form to push it open. Mozart turned reproachful eyes on him for being amused when she was going out of her way on his account. Shido shrugged a little to indicate his burden of sleepy Get Backer. The dog conceded the point and led its mistress into the room beyond the door.

"But it is also very, very quiet," Madoka was saying, "because it's far away from the streets, and from the parts of the house where people are working. Ginji-san will be able to rest here."

The bedroom he followed her into was more comfortably decorated than the drawing room, though still expensively furnished. Madoka felt for the cherry four-poster that dominated the room and turned back the comforter, and then she retreated to a corner so that Shido could deposit his friend in the envelope of fine crimson sheets.

"It's lunchtime." How she knew the time of day was beyond him, but he had stopped wondering at her sixth sense for such things. "Do you think Ginji-san will be hungry?" Madoka turned her unseeing eyes to Shido, waiting for a reply.

He hesitated. "Ginji can always eat," he said dubiously, with a glance his old friend.

"I suppose he also needs the rest," she offered helpfully, as if reading his mind. "The food will keep."

"Yes."

They had been speaking quietly, so as not to disturb Ginji, but just at that moment, a blood-curdling, bone-jarring "Shido-han!" rang through the house.

The former thunder god of Infinite Castle bolted upright in the bed, a little wild-eyed. Catching sight of Shido and Madoka, he relaxed. Then, "Shido-han!"

Jumping at the second obnoxious call, Ginji managed to tumble out of the bed, to land with a painful-sounding thud on the hardwood floor.

"Ginji-san!" Madoka cried out, as Shido dropped down beside his fallen friend.

"Ow," Ginji replied, voice thick with congestion. A pair of tears streamed down his face, and he swiped at them, snuffling miserably. "Is that Emishi?" he asked, with a choked cough.

Shido wrapped an arm around Ginji's ribs and pulled him upright. Ginji sank back onto the bed.

"Shido-han!"

"I'm going to go deal with that," Shido said, nodding briefly at Madoka.

"So much for Ginji-kun's rest." Madoka smiled, although the expression looked a little strained. She was a very quiet, reserved sort of person, and Emishi was precisely the opposite.

"I'll get rid of him," Shido assured her, and moved for the door.

"Oh, no, Shido-san, it's fine." She bowed quickly at Ginji and ran after Shido. "If we tell him that Ginji-kun is ill, I'm sure he will try to be quiet."

Shido snorted. "Try, yes. Succeed? I doubt it."

Ban sauntered down the street, hands stuffed in his pockets, cigarette clenched tightly between his teeth.

He had a stolen manuscript, a surprisingly alive author, and almost a dozen rich, powerful men with a lot to lose.

"Who ends up richer and more powerful?" Ban wondered aloud. He came to a park fountain and sat down on the lip, hands still in his pockets, cigarette still in his teeth. He grimaced, realizing belatedly that the rain had left the concrete lip of the fountain wet.

Any of the men implicated in Takanowa's book could use the book for blackmail. But, they had absolutely no reason to keep Takanowa alive.

There. That was the crux of the matter, that was the thing he had to find the truth of – why no one had tried to kill Takanowa, and why he seemed so comfortably oblivious to the idea that someone might be tempted to do so.

Several school age children were playing in the park. He watched them absently, mind racing behind his sunglasses.

Maybe the man responsible for the theft just didn't have the stomach for murder, he thought. Maybe he thought that, without the manuscript, Takanowa wouldn't dare open his mouth. The jump between embezzlement and murder was a big one, after all; he could understand that someone wouldn't be able to make the leap.

It wasn't bad reasoning, anyway, not really. Takanowa's research notes had been in his safe, with the manuscript, and on his computer, which had been destroyed in the fire. Without evidence, Takanowa's claims were like so many conspiracy theories – conceivable, perhaps even likely, but impossible to prove. Besides which, the thief would certainly use what information he found there to cover his tracks, so that Takanowa wouldn't be able to finger him again.

Ban decided that it was entirely possible that, to avoid blood on their hands, someone had been willing to gamble on Takanowa not being a threat.

But why wasn't Takanowa afraid? At their initial meeting, the man had exuded intelligence and confidence. Surely some of the men on his list were capable of murder, or at least of purchasing the services of a killer-for-hire, even if the one responsible for the theft wasn't. And as soon as the manuscript got out of its owner's hands, there was an off chance that one of those would-be killers would discover his little exposé. He should be afraid for his life, dammit.

Ban ground out the butt of his cigarette on the red bricks that circled the base of the fountain.

Moving on, because he was irritated with his lack of success thus far, he considered the other thing that had really stuck out to him: that the thief had failed to disable the smoke detectors in Takanowa's house. The police had confirmed that the arsonist had had at least a rough idea of what he was doing. Leaving the smoke alarms on was unforgivably stupid.

In fact, it was so ridiculous that Ban discarded the entire idea that the oversight had been unintentional. The thief, or the person who had hired the thief, had wanted the authorities at Takanowa's house.

But then, if that was true, why bother with the much, much more complicated security system? Ban shook that thought away; the answer was obvious. They hadn't wanted to wake Takanowa.

Could it be that they genuinely wanted to avoid bloodshed that badly, that they wanted to be sure the fire department would arrive in time to save Takanowa?

No, it just didn't add up. That was going a little far with his squeamish white-collar crook theory, and besides, there was no guarantee that the firefighters would have made it in time. There had to be another reason that the thief had wanted the authorities to show up.

One of the children in the park had a big mutt with him. He had a beat-up old tennis ball that he threw for the shaggy creature, who returned it with more enthusiasm than such a sorry toy should have inspired, even for a dumb animal.

Suddenly, Ban's eyes narrowed, focused on the boy and his dog. The kid, maybe ten or eleven years old, had a mean streak: he pretended to throw the ball, and laughed as his pet raced away from him, looking for the nonexistent toy.

The kid relented, calling the animal back to him and waving the tennis ball.

Damn.

Ban lit another cigarette and watched the children for awhile. If Ginji had been there, he would have been out in the field with them, even wet and muddy as it was.

Just as he wrinkled his nose at the thought of Ginji's tracking even more mud into his beloved car, the grey skies began to weep again. Irritated with his messy, sick partner, the mean kid and his stupid dog, the nasty weather, and his lying bastard of an employer, Ban hunched over against the cold rain and headed back to the Ladybug.