"I hope to God you're not as much fucking trouble when you're awake. Get up." A woman's voice lashed at him like a whip, as clear and quick as a lightning strike - or a snake bite - annoyed, and not a little urgent. The sharp, metallic tang of blood wafted up into his nostrils, and before he dared open his eyes, he took an internal stock of his injuries.

Someone, probably the woman with the whip-like voice, had propped him up against a brick wall, which prickled uncomfortably through his shirt, but there was no blood there. His knee hurt - had he twisted it when he fell in the office? Still no blood, though. He scowled - there was nothing wrong with him but a pounding head and nausea. Concussion, probably. But nothing that would make that too-familiar reek.

Which meant the chick who'd insulted him was probably the one bleeding. He didn't know how he felt about that.

"Dammit, get up already, they're close." That got his attention, even more than the blood. His eyes snapped open, searching out the voice.

It was the redhead from the bank. She crouched beside him in a narrow alleyway, every muscle braced for flight. A ragged hole in the leather that covered her left shoulder seeped blood. She gripped a semiautomatic pistol, an M1911, he thought - in her right hand. In her slender fingers, the big military-issue sidearm looked bulky and clunky.

"What the hell?" Ban demanded, shifting to sit on his ankles. Like her, he was getting his feet under him, preparing to run. "Put that down - I don't do guns.

"I carried you," she said flatly, "until they shot me." He flushed, but before he could come up with a suitable wisecrack, she waved the gun under his nose. "As for this, you crashed my party, pretty boy. We're doing things my way.

A gunshot rang out, and with the preciseness of that otherworldly instinct, he snatched at the redhead and dragged her out of the bullet's trajectory.

Too late, he realized he'd grabbed her bad arm.

"Son of a bitch!" She gasped in pain, swearing more in reflex than at him, and he grabbed her again, by her uninjured shoulder this time, and hauled her up to her feet as he came to his own.

"Run," he commanded, and they tore down the alleyway. She matched him pace for pace, nimble and quick in her stiletto-heeled boots, even as a thick, ugly glob of blood slid down her upper arm. In fact, she was having an easier time of it than he was, with his pounding head and aching knee.

"Wanna tell me why there are people shooting at you, lady?"

She snorted, an indelicate sound for such a pretty girl. "Me? You're the one they came after, scarecrow. They weren't on to me until I had to rescue your skinny ass." Her voice was thready with pain. "You're welcome, by the way.

Shit. Takanowa had set him up. Again. Chagrined, he pressed his lips tightly together, refusing to give her the satisfaction of letting her know that he didn't exactly know who "they" were. Takanowa didn't have the network to set men with guns on him - whoever the greedy author had sold out to owned the firepower.

They burst out into the street, and immediately Ban reached for the girl, to pull her back, but she had already retreated into the alley and was hissing at him to do the same. He pressed himself closely to the brick as a bullet split the afternoon, setting the passersby to shrieking, fleeing the unseen gunman. Almost unseen. Ban had barely glimpsed the shiny rifle barrel pointing unobtrusively from a darkly-tinted car window.

"Damn. Yoshida's bullyboys are quick on their feet." The girl dropped to her ankles. "I really didn't think they had time to corner us."

Ban thought quickly. Yoshida was the CEO of the… shit, of the Mizuho Corporate Bank. Wow, he really had walked right into that one. He reddened, and felt an ugly growl rise in his throat as the redhead suddenly started to laugh, although the chuckle was weak with pain.

"You didn't know, did you." It was not a question. "You didn't even know who'd pocketed Takanowa." His ire faded as the hand that clenched her pistol reached to cover her bloody left arm. "You're either really ballsy, or just plain stupid, scarecrow, to walk into something like this blind."

"Mido," he snarled at her. "It's Mido."

She shook her head, flinching slightly as another bullet buried itself into the ground near her feet. This one had come from behind them. "With that hair, you could be Dorothy's scarecrow. All you need's a Phrygian cap." She flashed a wicked smile at his deepening flush, but there was a very slight trace of camaraderie in the grin. "Besides," she added off-handedly, "if you only had a brain, we might not be in this mess."

The smile twisted into a grimace, and she stood up. "I'm going to deal with the assholes behind us. Try not to get killed in the meantime."

Almost before he could blink, she was gone, leaving a gust of wind behind her that almost brought Ban to his knees. Straining, he could catch glimpses of her red hair, streaking across his vision like a comet across the sky. Fast didn't begin to describe her movement. Stray boxes and papers took flight, right out of their dumpsters.

Ban blinked. At speeds like that, she should have been able to dodge bullets a little better. A twinge of guilt nudged at his gut. Of course, she had been carrying almost a hundred and thirty pounds of dead weight at the time. It hadn't even occurred to him to question her ability to do so - he'd seen the powerful musculature beneath her leather. But saving his neck had cost her, assuming she really was on the up and up herself. And he hadn't questioned that, either. His instincts about people were good, ninety-nine percent of the time.

Well. She was doing her part admirably, if the grunts and squeals of pain from that direction were any indication. He heard gunshots, but none of them sounded right for the military-issue handgun she carried. She'd shown him up already. That just couldn't stand. She hadn't exactly called him an amateur, but she'd implied it. That stung a lot worse than the comment on his woefully disarranged hair.

Ban sauntered out into the street, now much more at ease with the gun pointed at him. Facing that kind of threat was a simple thing when he was alone. It got harder when he was distracted by a partner.

A shot rang out. Ban knew exactly where the barrel was, and he'd already stepped out the way before the bullet hit the air. Another fired off, but he cocked his head to the right, and it whizzed by his ear. There was a flowing sort of energy from the gun itself, and whenever he found himself in that very slightly arched trajectory, he slipped aside like soap through wet fingers.

A second invisible-but-all-too-tangible stream of energy hit him, and he tumbled forward easily as a bullet followed the stream right over his back, only minutely distracted by the appearance of the second gunman. He would take the one in the car, first, and anyone who was with him.

His mind had assumed its natural, methodic rhythms, devoid of fear, or compassion, or doubt. At times like this, when he was alone, a question always came up behind the part of his mind that was currently keeping him alive. Why keep a partner, his brain queried rationally, when it is always so much easier like this? When everything goes exactly as predicted, when everything - absolutely everything - makes sense? Good was good and bad was bad - there was none of that grey in-between that Ginji so excelled at bringing into his life.

And his too-active brain's inquiry was answered, not with any sort of sensible reply, but by a gaping emptiness in his soul, a yawning sense of isolation. Like spasms from an amputated limb, it was a ghost of pain long since vanished.

Oh, that set-off part of his mind said, somewhat derisively. That. He could almost hear his grandmother scoffing in the background. Well, if you insist.

In moments he was across the street. The shining barrel was jerked into the car, but the glass didn't disrupt the narrow stream of malevolent energy Ban navigated. He felt the shiver in the stream, but before the gunman could fire, Ban rammed his fist through the window and reached for the weapon he still couldn't see, clenching his fingers closed around the barrel that produced the current. The man who held the gun flinched, but was too stupid to let go. Ban's snakebite crushed the steel, and he jerked the weapon and its owner out through the smashed window. Finally, the black armored man relinquished his grip, and Ban smacked him over the back of the head with the butt of the rifle.

The driver was fumbling for a handgun, but Ban was half into the car by then, diving in through the window to avoid a bullet from the other gunman, who, judging from the trajectory of the energy, had to be across the street and shooting from a second floor window.

He snatched at the pistol and crushed it even more thoroughly than the rifle, and smashed his fist - still holding the crumpled remains of what had been a very expensive Smith and Wesson - into the driver's jaw. No one was in the backseat. Presumably the other rifle-bearing gunner had ridden there.

That other stream of energy had vanished, and that made Ban very wary. He slunk into the backseat, wincing a little as his aching knee dragged across the passenger seat's armrest. Looking up through the tinted glass, he found the window from which the current had originated, and saw the silhouette of the gunman. Its hands were thrown over its face, and it was cowering against the windowpanes. As he watched it slid to the ground so that only the top of its head was visible.

A knock on the door surprised him. He drew his hand back, ready to strike if necessary. The redhead's face popped into view in the broken window.

"Well," she said dryly, pointing a long, slim finger at the blood on the jagged glass- his blood, his shredded skin reminded him with a surge of stinging, nagging pain - "I guess this disqualifies you as the Cowardly Lion. Or the Tin Man. So you're stuck with Scarecrow." She said it with some obscure satisfaction, and he felt a brief commiseration with all of the Volts he had labeled over the past year.

"What about the guy in the window?" Ban asked, eyeing the unmoving silhouette.

"Blue," she said cryptically. She pulled away, and came round the car to open the driver's door. The man Ban had knocked out slumped against her; she lowered the limp body to the ground and took his position. "The cops will be here soon. I don't really want to be here when they show up, do you?"

Ban shook his head. "What's Blue?" he demanded.

"My partner."

The adrenaline was leaving, quickly, and his head started to throb more painfully. She was being deliberately closed-mouthed. "Don't you want to wait for him?"

She pointed at the broken window.

"Shit!" Ban couldn't stop himself from jumping. A massive head had protruded into the car, a head with a long, boxy snout of a nose, curious black eyes, and pointy, cropped ears. Her partner had approached so silently that Ban had completely missed Blue's arrival.

The Great Dane sniffed at the blood on the window, then nudged at the shattered class still clinging to the doorframe. It looked inquiringly up at its - she called it a partner - and the redhead reached over to open the door.

The big grey - blue, duh - dog clambered into the car, over the central compartment, and into the backseat with Ban, snuffling at him. The skin on its snout wrinkled slightly as it growled a warning at him. Ban knew enough about the breed to know they were generally genteel, well-behaved dogs. He repeated that phrase and tried to ignore the blood on its teeth.

"Blue, down." The Great Dane stopped snarling at once, and lay down. Its long body took up most of the bench seat, but Ban wasn't going to complain. People he understood, he could predict. Which was exactly why he wasn't about to Evil Eye the damn thing and send it scurrying away with its tail between its legs. The redhead wouldn't like it, and he'd seen enough of her to know that he didn't want to make an enemy of her.

"Relax, scarecrow. He ain't gonna hurt you." She turned the key in the ignition.

"I'm sure that's what the guy up there thought," Ban replied sardonically, jerking at thumb behind him at the would-be shooter's vantage. "And it's Mido."

"He wouldn't have hurt him bad. Wouldn't have needed to. Blue tends to make even big men piss themselves." Ban's eyes darted to the window, and sure enough, the silhouette was already slipping away.

Blue couldn't sit upright in the car, but he suddenly whimpered, sniffing urgently at the air. He scrabbled over Ban, as if oblivious to him, his paws landing heavily on the Get Backer's injured knee.

"Ow!" Ban forced a few choice oaths, through gritted teeth, but one glance at the redhead explained the dog's unease. She was pale, and her blood was already soaking into the car.

That nasty twinge of guilt prickled in his gut again. "Let me drive," he told her, reaching to climb into the front. "You need to take care of that arm."

"Right now, I need to get out of here. So do you." She shifted into drive, and just as Ban's sharp ears detected the wail of sirens in the background, she maneuvered the car around the fallen gunners and into the street.

"Dammit, girl, let me drive!"

Blue growled again and the redhead set her jaw before shoving her foot to the floor, sending Ban flying backward to land ignominiously across the back windshield.

Hevn smirked behind her hand. All the little boys were stupefied by Paul's date, even Juubei and Kazuki. If she were less of a woman, if she were less secure in her own appeal, she might have been a little jealous.

She had known Paul for a quite awhile, now, and she knew him as well or better than anybody. There had been a time, longer back than she cared to think about, that she had been in the Get Backer's shoes, making it one meal to the next, and the Honky Tonk had been as critical to her survival back then as it was to theirs now. Besides which, though he didn't make a big deal about it, the man was as good an Seeker as they came, which meant he had contacts in every major industry and organization in the country. Those contacts had been vital to Hevn's personal success, and he had been only too willing to share. A rare thing, among Seekers. Most prided themselves on the spread of their informants, and she didn't know another that would have divulged their precious contacts to anyone. Especially not to a hard luck Negotiator like Hevn had been.

Yes, she owed Wan Paul a lot, and watching four much younger men pant over his knock-out girlfriend did her heart good, especially when two of them were gay and one of them happily entwined with his own remarkable sweetheart.

Natsumi and Rena seemed just a little intimidated, but they would get over that. Hevn had intimidated them too, for awhile, because although they were both pretty girls in their own right, they were still young, still uncomfortable in their own skin. Time would fix that. And Madoka, well, for obvious reasons she never troubled herself about anyone's appearance. And so, other than Hevn, she was the only one not fussed about the unexpected arrival of Paul and his hot date.

Alexis was a tiny, tiny woman, with lush curves and sparkling green eyes. Traces of her Japanese heritage could be detected in pronounced cheekbones and faintly tilted eyes, but for the most part she looked western. Her face was a perfect oval, with set with a straight, narrow nose and a small, full-lipped mouth. Short, chocolaty-colored hair swirled invitingly at her ears and at the nape of her neck, flirty and feminine. A white rose was clipped behind one ear.

It was more than her looks that had the boys dumbfounded, though. She exuded a quiet kind of joy, not Ginji's exuberant, bubbly happiness, or even Madoka's sweet in-love-for-the-first-time bliss, but something much deeper. It reminded her of Paul, actually, which was probably why Hevn had liked the woman right from the off. They both had old souls, and the absolute contentment of a complete life, one lived with no regrets. Alexis had the body and the face, and even the self-restraint, that made a woman sultry, mysterious, seductive. But she didn't have the motive to play that game, and that made her all the more attractive.

Paul took it all in stride, as he did everything. He was too much a gentleman to flaunt the woman on his arm just to tweak the noses of the little boys. "I'm sorry to barge in, Madoka-san. Alexis insisted, though."

Madoka shook her head, "No, I'm happy to have you. Will you stay for dinner?"

Alexis held a big vase of white and yellow daisies, of various breeds, before her. "No, Otowa-san, I have no wish to be the stranger who intrudes on a gathering of friends. I just wanted to offer Amano-san my wishes, such as they are."

The blind girl smiled, as if she had heard the smile in Alexis' voice. "Ginji would say that strangers are friends. We just haven't met them yet. Because he's the reason everyone is here, I think I'll follow his logic for the evening. Dinner's on the table, and we haven't started yet. Please, stay."

Alexis laughed, a deliciously dark sound that sent prickles down Hevn's neck. "I think that was actually Will Rogers' philosophy. Anyone that could live by it would be an extraordinary human being.

"He is," Paul murmured.

There was a quiet moment, while everyone silently concurred. Then, Madoka cocked an ear toward the inner part of the mansion.

"I think they're ready for us," she observed, though how she could tell was well beyond Hevn's ability to understand.

Shido blinked, shaking off his bemusement, and took Madoka's arm. They walked side-by-side into the corridor beyond the parlor, and led the others into the dining room, where a veritable feast awaited them.

Meanwhile, Ginji slept peacefully, alone in the big bedroom. Whatever danger had threatened Ban had vanished, and had not even been significant enough to merit a phone call. A maid slipped in on silent feet to deposit Alexis' daisies next to Kazuki and Juubei's fruit basket, and then slipped out again, closing the door behind her with soft hands. Ginji slept on, dreaming of nothing in particular and everything at once, the hazy not-dreams of fevered slumber.