Ban cursed. "You're insane," he spat, holding onto the back of the passenger seat. His knuckles were white with anger, and he had already destroyed the right side of the bucket seat in his grip. "You're insane, and you're going to get us both killed."
She didn't answer him, but instead swerved around a corner, running a stoplight and narrowly avoiding a blue Beemer. Ban's shoulder drove into the window, and he nearly smacked his head against the doorframe.
It was one thing when he was driving. Slipping between big rigs, running fifty miles over the speed limit, riding on two wheels around sharp corners, that was all in a day's work for Ban. But to be in the backseat while the chick drove, her lavender eyes bleary with blood loss - it was terrifying. And there was precious little that terrified Mido Ban.
Of course, he couldn't fault her style, the reasonable part of his brain thought admiringly. She was almost as good as he was behind a wheel. The cop that had come up behind them couldn't possibly keep up with her. And he had finally figured out where she was going, although she had turned him around by taking one-way streets the wrong way and making split-second U-turns in the middle of busy intersections. She was taking him back to the bank, to the Ladybug.
"I don't think you've got anything to complain about, dipshit. You got me shot, if you remember." She jerked the car to the right, driving on the curb for several seconds.
"You didn't have to help me," he fired back. The accusation stung. "You could have walked away."
"You wouldn't have," she answered matter-of-factly. "You wouldn't have left me in that office. You pulled me away from bullets, twice, without even thinking that you were putting yourself in the line of fire to do it."
He blinked - actually, she was right, that hadn't occurred to him at the time. He scowled, suddenly out of ammunition.
"You could have killed those guys," she continued, in that same blunt, emotionless tone. "I was watching, you know. Nice grip, by the way. You didn't. And you aren't afraid of those cops anymore than I am. Just too impatient to deal with them." She sighed as she swung wildly into the parking space next to the Ladybug. "Just like someone else I used to know."
He couldn't come up with a decent response to that, either, not knowing who the someone else in question might be. He glowered at the back of her head instead.
"Let it go, scarecrow." There was a very slight conciliatory note in her voice as she swiveled round to face him. "So you're not the only noble-minded menace in town. Get over yourself."
Ban relinquished his hold on the seat in front of him and sank back. The adrenaline rush that had fueled him after being brained in the bank had subsided; he felt exhausted. There was too much going on that he didn't understand, and he didn't like it one bit.
He put the tips of his fingers to his temples. The headache was getting worse. "What the hell are you, lady?" He couldn't make the words even remotely threatening. Even to his own ears, he sounded tired and beaten.
"I'm a damned fine Retriever, that's what." A shiny silver thumb drive caught his eye as she flipped it coin-like into the air over the central console.
Ban swore perfunctorily. "Now just who the hell hired you?"
"The home insurance company Takanowa wanted to collect from." She turned away from him laid her head back on the headrest. "There were irregularities about the fire that destroyed his home. They figured he set it himself and wanted proof. I got it. You?"
Ban closed his eyes, frustrated nearly to the point of tears. "I wondered how nobody picked up one the fact that the smoke alarms went off. Insurance. Damn, that's good. I should have thought of that." He ran a hand through his straw-like hair and grimaced. "Takanowa hired me first. Wanted to make the thing look convincing, I guess. Once I figured him out, I contacted the publisher. Promised me the royalties on the book if Takanowa was convicted, on top of my fee."
The difference in his tone must have struck a cord with the Great Dane. The dog had been hunkered down in the floorboards behind the redhead's seat, sitting tight for the crazy ride. It's apparent lack of fear indicated that the driving style was familiar to him, even if the guy sitting beside him was not. It nudged his hand with a sympathetic wet nose. Almost reluctantly, he stroked the big blue head.
He could have taken the drive. But whatever her motives may had been, she had risked her neck for him. And she was right. She was a damned fine Retriever, and he was too good a Retriever himself to steal someone else's fairly scored target.
Unless it was Fuyuki's, of course.
"Guess this means the end of the 100% success rate of the Get Backers." He dropped his head back against the seat, imitating her. He dreaded the drive to Madoka's. Dreaded having to tell his partner he'd failed.
"Get Backers." The redhead's voice was very quiet, now, but she laid a slight stress on the "s."
"Partner's out sick," Ban explained with a snort. "He's got this impeccable sense of timing."
"Hard times?" Something in the way she said it made Ban think she'd seen her share of hungry days.
"Seen better," he agreed, not to put too fine a point on it.
"Well, scarecrow, looks like today's your lucky day. I'm actually parked over there." She raised a weary hand.
Ban's jaw dropped. The redhead was pointing at a 1966 Jaguar XKE convertible, a car Enzo Ferrari had once described as the most beautiful car ever made. Custom paint job, and shining like it had just come off the lot. Given his experience in the backseat of Yoshida's henchmens' car, she likely had something equally spectacular under the hood.
"Scarecrow. Focus." He clamped his mouth shut. The redhead - what the hell was her name, anyway? - sounded tired, and her breath came and went too quickly. Ban fixed a sharp gaze on her.
She'd lost more blood than he'd realized. "Listen, Get Backer. My laptop's in the trunk. Along with a brand new four gig jump drive."
It didn't take but a second for that to sink in. The wonders of the digital age, the rational part of his brain approved, while the other, visceral part crowed with joy. Two employers, two jobs, and one target that could be only too easily copied and saved onto a second piece of hardware. Ban cursed himself for an idiot for not thinking of it himself, but he couldn't stay angry. Girl was a fucking good luck charm.
In the mirror, he could see the pallor of her face. "Hope you don't mind digging out a bullet out for me first. The reciprocity of back scratching, you know." She tried to smile, then, but the pain had become too severe. She swallowed hard.
"I'll trust you to get it," she said, resting her right hand on the center compartment, loosely holding the jump drive containing Takanowa's book and research notes. The keys to the classic beauty four spaces down were also in her palm. "First aid kit's in the glove box. Warning you, though. Scratch my baby, and I'll scratch your eyes out. And then I'll set Blue on you." Her voice, so sharp and precise before, had grown sluggish.
"I would sooner die that scratch that car," Ban muttered, and he was only half-joking.
He got out, leaving the door open for the dog. Across the way, the Jag beckoned. A brilliantly rendered rose bloom stretched over most of the massive hood, its scarlet, stylized petals a striking contrast to the black metallic paint that covered the rest of the beautiful roadster. He got out the laptop bag first. When he unlocked the passenger-side door, he did so meticulously, careful not the scratch the paint around the lock. She hadn't been joking about the car. The Jag was lovingly maintained; she obviously cared about it. And not with a car lover's fanaticism, either. The car was somehow personal.
Ban snorted with laughter when the door swung open. The two-seat interior was newly upholstered in red leather. Beautiful. But a homey quilt had been spread over the whole of the passenger seat, and it was covered with blue fur. There was something peculiarly touching about it, a concession to something she - he really needed to get her name - needed in her life.
He grabbed the kit, locked and closed the door, and went back to the redhead. Her brilliant purple eyes were closed, her breath too quick. He hadn't realized it before, under the leather and the attitude and the blazing stare, but unconscious, he could see that wasn't any older than Himiko. Maybe not that old.
Ban would have much preferred to have taken her to a hospital. Extracting a bullet hurt, badly, and he'd have given a good portion of his fee to have a doctor cut her open. But that wasn't the deal. And professionals honored their deals.
He was capable enough. The bullet had lodged in the meaty part of her upper arm. Unless it had buried itself into the bone, digging it out shouldn't be difficult. Anatomy was a simple enough thing, and his hands were steadier than most surgeons'.
A copy of the book and research notes for an extemporaneous surgery. What had she called it? The reciprocity of back scratching.
Ban was getting the better end of the deal, but at least she was unconscious. That was something, another unusual bit of luck.
He slipped the girl out of her trench coat and unzipped the cat suit, surprised at his relative lack of interest in what lay beneath. He even felt a little guilty as he pushed the leather aside, his usual voyeuristic inclinations vanished.
The opened suit exposed a blue cotton bra with cherries on it, the sort of thing a preteen girl might wear, but it wasn't the first thing that caught Ban's eyes. Sliding a hand behind her back, he gently pulled her left arm out of its sleeve. Then he looked at Blue.
The dog was in the passenger seat, now, watching him. "You do this?" Ban nodded at the girl's shoulder. Above the gunshot wound, there was a ring of old scars, puncture wounds, that encircled a good bit of her left shoulder. A bite-mark.
The dog didn't answer.
There were other scars. One of them he recognized as a feeding tube insertion incision. Another, on the inside of her forearm, had been made by a IV needle - one that had been stuck in her for a long, long time. The other, regular, surgical marks, perfectly circular scars that lined up along her spine, at each vertebra - Ban didn't even want to think about what had made them.
He cleaned the blood from the wound with a sterile pad, and tried to focus on the girlish bra instead. He had a feeling she'd rather have her underwear exposed than her past, and that was a desire he understood only too well.
She was small up top, but he noted the fact with a clinical sort of detachment. It was the bra which interested him. Like the quilt in the Jag, the cherry spattered bra hinted at something very soft and young and vulnerable underneath all the leather, and he found that quality oddly appealing. It wasn't attractive, exactly, but he was drawn to it, like he was drawn to Ginji's unabashed enthusiasm for life and for people. A beautiful thing he couldn't really participate in, but which he could appreciate more fully than someone less jaded. And which he could protect more thoroughly than someone less skilled.
Extracting the bullet took awhile, and before the end of it, even Ban's hands were trembling; he shook with nausea. Throughout the ordeal, the big blue Dane watched the Ban with his black eyes, whining pitiably now and then, but otherwise he stayed out of the Get Backer's way. As he bandaged the neatly stitched wound, Ban glanced at the big dog, briefly wondering what it would feel like to watch someone else cutting and sticking needles into his partner, and decided with a shiver that Blue had better restraint than he did.
Continuing the unfamiliar streak of good luck, the redhead came to briefly, well after he'd bandaged her up and put her back in her clothes. Just as he finished copying the manuscript onto her thumb drive (he'd half expected Takanowa's drive to be blank, or to be wiped clean in some fluke cyber-accident), she stirred, mumbling.
He'd cleared the glass from the passenger seat, and sat beside her. "You say something?"
She chuckled raggedly. "Couldn't just take the money and run, could you."
"I had Blue to consider," he reminded her.
"Blue…" The dog, relegated to the backseat once again, stirred at his name, sat up to nuzzle at her cheek, then lay back down.
"Unoriginal kind of name, isn't it?" Ban observed critically. "Not what I would expect from someone who dresses like a dominatrix and drives a classic Jag."
"I didn't name him," she said, closing her eyes again. "His previous owner used him in dogfights. Just referred to him as 'the blue.' It's all he knows to answer to." There was an ugly twist to her mouth.
Ban felt an equally nasty grimace on his own lips. "I guess that explains the cropped ears."
"I did that. There wasn't much left of them when Blue and I found one another." Her voice was faint. She needed rest. Hell, she needed a doctor. Kid like that, relying on a stranger's grudging professionalism - it make him a little sick. Of course, between the mild concussion he suspected he had and the bloody impromptu surgery, he was fortunate not to have tossed his cookies already.
"I'll take you back to your place."
She shook her head wearily. "Buddy, there ain't no way you're getting behind the wheel of my car."
"Assuming you can drive, I'll tag along and catch a cab back here." Didn't really matter whether she agreed or not. She was struggling already to keep her eyes open.
"Won't work. Gotta get rid of this car." She was fading fast, pain and blood loss dragging her back into a necessary sleep.
"I'll take care of it, kid."
She tried to answer, but her head lolled to one side, and she was asleep. Or unconscious. As much blood as she'd lost, it amounted to the same thing.
A quick phone call proved that his luck really had turned around. He and Ginji had done a job for their sometimes mechanic not two weeks before, and on hearing the story, Hojo was only too happy to help him out by 'disposing' of the car. Ban had suspected that the old mechanic had a nice little sideline chop shop; evidently he'd had good reason to. Since the car was an expensive model, Hojo even agreed to tow it himself, which left Ban free to take the redhead home.
He found her address - and her name! - on her license. Wakakisa Hana lived in Chuo, to the southeast. Where Takanowa's home had been - which was probably how she got into the whole mess. Maybe half an hour, forty minutes away, if the traffic was okay. He apologized silently for what he was about to do, then he scooped the redhead - Hana-chan - into his arms, whistled to the dog, and went to the Jag, just as the sun was setting over Shinjuku.
Ginji felt Ban arrive several minutes before he heard the scrabbling at the window. He still felt awful, but he couldn't help smiling. Ban must have seen all the cars still parked outside, heard the laughter from the parlor, and decided that he didn't want any part of it. Ginji unlatched the window, and his partner hauled himself inside.
"It's ten o'clock." He complained. "Why are they all still here?"
"Night's young, bro." Ginji said with a smile. "I think everybody's forgotten about me."
"Not for you, it's not." Ban ran a hand through his stringy, sticky hair. "Night. Young, I mean."
Ginji tried to laugh, but ended up coughing instead. "Ban-chan, your hair looks -"
"Not another word," Ban warned, "or I will personally add a broken nose to your other troubles." He sat on his heels and blinked blearily upward. "There a shower anywhere close?"
"Yeah." Ginji pointed to a heavy door to the left of the bed. "Bathroom's there. The other one's a closet. And that one goes out to the rest of the house." He pointed at the other doors.
"Hope you don't mind company tonight. I'm bushed."
"You can share the bed. If you tell me the whole story."
"I swear. But shower first."
Clean and freshly clothed, Ginji's partner sprawled out on the bed beside him, relating the Case of the Missing Manuscript. He wore his hair down, like he had when they first started working together. It brought back good memories, but Ginji preferred it the other way, wild and spiky and careless. That was who Ban was now, and although Ginji loved the old Ban, this one had become even more important to him.
He frequently interrupted Ban's narrative, but Ban never squashed a question, even if he occasionally teased Ginji for needing to ask it. Every once in awhile he'd grimace, and say he hadn't thought of it at the time.
"See what happens when you're sick?" Ban groused, when Ginji asked him why he had left his back open in the office. "Everything gets screwed up." Then he frowned. "Well, not everything. I came across a sort-of luck charm after that."
He told him about the redhead who'd rescued him and about his encounter with Yoshida's gunmen in the car. Everything seemed to have clicked into place for Ban after that, which never, never happened. No one interrupted the surgery, nobody followed him back to Hana-chan's place, no one was waiting at her apartment. She didn't wake up when he took her clothes off, miracle of miracles, and -
"Ban-chan, you didn't!" Ginji yelped, horrified.
"I couldn't leave her in that bloody leather," Ban said defensively. "Besides, she was just a little girl. Basically. Nothing to look at even if I had been inclined."
"I thought you said she was pretty."
"She was. I dunno. Just not interested, I guess." He gave a weary chuckle. "Maybe she's a little too much like me for me to be attracted to her. Loud. Belligerent." Sagging against the headboard, he added quietly, "Soft, though. Too young."
Ginji cocked his head to one side. "You're softer than you think you are, Ban-chan. Even if she hadn't saved your life, you still would have made sure she got home safe. And you would have let her keep the manuscript." He didn't doubt it. He would have taken the jump drive from Shido-kun, and just about anybody else. But not a kid younger than Himiko, with scars like the ones he described.
"Shut up, lightning brat," Ban replied calmly, eyes closed. "I got a rep, you know."
Smiling, Ginji shook his head. "If you say so, Ban-chan. What happened after you - uh - put her in her jammies?"
"I took a 2000 yen note out of her wallet for cab fare, fed the dog, and left her an IOU. Then I -"
"Wait, you stole from her?"
"Borrowed, Ginji, pay attention. I called a cab -"
"You fed the dog?" Ginji laughed, and for once, managed to finish the laugh without coughing. "You made yourself right at home, didn't you?"
"He was hungry. Shut up. I called a cab and went back to the bank parking lot. Hojo - wait, did I tell you that part?"
"No - Hojo the mechanic Hojo?"
"Yeah. Remember I told you I thought he ran a chop shop on the side, last time we had the Ladybug in? Well, I was right. For the Caddy, he was willing to tow the damn thing himself and take care of it."
"I remember you telling me that. I don't remember what a chop shop is," Ginji admitted.
"Place where they disassemble stolen cars for parts."
"Oh, right. Okay, go on."
"Hojo'd left a note for me. Under the wipers. Lemme know he'd picked up the Caddy. I called the client, handed off the manuscript. Collected our fee. Came here."
Ban hadn't opened his eyes for awhile, and even as he spoke, his breathing was slowing down, evening out. Ginji suspected it was as much the brief, uncomfortable partnership with the girl that had so worn at Ban's energy reserves. Ginji had never heard Ban compare anyone to himself, and he wasn't exactly sure what he meant by it, but Hana-chan obviously intrigued him. It didn't matter to Ginji. Anyone who was like Ban-chan was someone worth knowing. He wanted to meet her, and told his partner so.
"Bet you will, Ginji. Outta Chuo. Prob'ly why we haven't run across her before. Hell of a Retriever."
He was mumbling now, and Ginji wasn't sure he was still really conscious of anything he said. In the morning, he probably wouldn't remember what a giant compliment he'd given her.
"Anyway. Not worried 'bout Takanowa. Toasted for insurance fraud, soon as Lucky hands in her target. Client called the Feds on Yoshida before I left."
"Lucky."
"Luck charm. Hana." His head dropped forward; he snapped it upright.
"Ban-chan."
"Mmm."
"G'night, Ban-chan," Ginji said quietly. "Thanks."
Ban was sitting on the comforter, so Ginji gently pulled it out from under him. His partner didn't need another hint; he dropped to his side, burrowed down into the covers. Ginji settled the blankets over Ban, then he sank down beside him. Before very many minutes had passed, both Get Backers were sleeping soundly.