AN: To the person who asked on the last fic, I have the "official" soundtrack, and it came with an insert with all the characters names in it. So technically I'm using that and not my fan subs to do the Romanization of the names, but… I had my fan subs long before it got licensed, they're by a group called AE, I like them, but I know I'll be buying the series when it's officially released.
Yes, this fic is confusing; I have a "cheat sheet" of what goes where to write it, and I'll try to make it as clear as possible. If I just use the character name you can assume I mean their personality, I'll specify when I'm referring to something their body is doing.
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Lying sprawled out on his back, Ginji shook his head as his vision slowly began to clear. His eyes ached with a dull pain and were extremely dry, causing them to itch. Vaguely, he could hear the sounds of the night. To his far distant left and right, dull street lights allowed him just enough light to know that he was still alive, but not enough light to show him any details of the world around him.
He forced himself to slowly sit upright, patting his arms and legs to make sure he still had all of them. Yep, they were there, but they felt… odd. Almost like he didn't have a sense of touch anymore, or that something were coming between his fingertips and his flesh.
Maybe he'd just temporarily lost his ability to feel in the blast. He shook out his head as he staggered to his feet. He and Ban had gone after a large, incredibly rare uncut ruby that had happened to be in the hands of Himiko, aka Lady Poison, at the time. She would have been an easy fight but Dr. Jackal had shown up unexpectedly, angrily demanding to know why Himiko had taken "his job." In the argument between Himiko and Akabane, Ginji had tried to snatch the jewel away, only to discover that Shido had been waiting in the shadows and also saw that as the exact opportune moment to go after the gem.
The two had collided with each other, smashing into Himiko. The gem had flown straight up into the air, twirling and spinning about in a radiant burst of ruby color. "Someone catch it before it falls down the sewer!" he'd heard Ban shout. He'd attempted to move fast enough to catch it, he'd seen Akabane begin to move too, when the gem had impacted the ground.
It exploded in burst of dry, hot red air. Ginji remembered his back hitting hard against a building before he'd slid down to the ground, losing consciousness from the pain of the impact. He'd been no match for the force of that explosion, and he guessed the others hadn't been as well.
"Ban-chan?" he called, his voice echoing in the empty air. Wait… he distinctly remembered hitting his back against a building when he'd landed from the explosion. So why had he awakened flat on his back in the middle of an alley? Was the force of the gem great enough to have leveled the building?
Panic began to race through his mind, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. "Ban-chan, Ban-chan?" he called desperately, running through the small park the group had been fighting in. "Are you hurt? Ban-chan?! Answer me!"
No answer save the distant sounds of cars honking and his shoes crunching over dry earth. He stumbled, falling over a rock and landing hard on his knee. A short but sharp burst of pain raced up his leg. "Ow," he muttered to himself, rubbing his injured knee. He happened to catch a glimpse of his hands, unearthly white in the dim overhead light.
"What… what happened to my hands?" he wondered, raising them up to his face. Was that… was he wearing gloves? No… he never wore full, white gloves. It couldn't be…
Backing up, Ginji hit his back against a damaged light pole, bumping it just enough to close the circuit the explosion had opened and causing the light to flicker on. Catching a glimpse of "his" face in a puddle, "his" eyes hidden underneath the brim of a black hat, Ginji let out a scream that could be heard three blocks away.
-
HEVN knew she shouldn't have followed Ban and Ginji, but she had taken her camera along to get some shots of them in action. After all, if it worked for Peter Parker to earn a little extra cash on the side, why couldn't it work for HEVN? The moment she'd seen that gem hitting the ground, and the flash of light that had followed, she knew she was in trouble. She knew she was in major trouble.
She shivered, her legs freezing. She hadn't thought she'd worn shorts that day, but apparently she had. Her hands were stiff, too, and she was having a hard time moving them from how cold her arms were. Why had she gone out in something so light for a stake-out in the middle of the night, she wondered. Her clothes were also fitting oddly, flapping against her body as though they were two sizes too big for her. She hadn't… shrunk in the explosion, had she?
HEVN paused in front of a store. It took her a moment that the face staring back at her, while also a blonde, had big cow-like brown eyes instead of her own sharp yellow eyes. It took her just another moment to realize that the face staring back at her… wasn't her own.
-
Ban was feeling kind of top-heavy. His back hurt, and he wasn't quite sure why. It was too dark to see anything around where he'd awakened, with only enough light to realize that he'd regained consciousness inside the top floor of an abandoned building, a camera that he was sure he hadn't brought on the trip lying beside him on the floor. The moon came out from behind the shadows for a second and he saw another form lying in the room, sprawled unconscious upon the floor. Even in the pale moonlight, he'd recognize that long hair and the gentle sound of bells moving in the breeze anywhere. Kazuki. The long-haired freak must have been spying on them… again, Ban thought in irritation as he got to his hands and knees and crawled across the floor.
"Kazuki, yo, wake up," Ban said, shaking the pale boy's form by the shoulder. Kazuki's eyes twitched, then slowly slid open.
"Oh, it's you. The… organizer woman."
Ban felt his eyebrow twitching in frustration. "Do I LOOK like a woman to you? How hard did you hit your head when you fell?"
Kazuki's eyes blinked in confusion. "Yes, you look like a woman to me."
In the next moment, Shido found himself wondering why HEVN had punched him square in the eye for saying… well, for saying that she looked like a woman to him. And where the heck was that annoying bell ringing noise coming from? It sounded like Kazuki was incredibly near by, practically in his ear, but he couldn't see Kazuki anywhere…
-
Kazuki, meanwhile, was digging around in the rubble, wondering where his bells had gone. He'd reached up to find them, and discovered not only were the missing, but his hair was gone as well! He was choking and sobbing and trying to fight back the tears that were coming to his eyes. He'd grown that hair out for… for years! Since he was a tiny child! To have it all burned off while helping HEVN do surveillance on the Get Backers… to have it all burned off by the explosion of that horrible gem…
He paused, wiping the tears away. No, no, now was not the time for tears. He had to find his bells and get to a doctor. He felt strange pain in his chest, and had noticed that it felt slightly… oddly shaped. He must be swelling up from the force of the impact… he needed a doctor…
A soft voice spoke behind him. "I'm… I'm dead. I'm dead, aren't I?" it asked, a man's voice. Kazuki whirled around, ready to run if necessary despite the pain in his limbs.
Shido's form stood there, arms limply hanging at his sides. "I'm dead… looking at my own body…" he whispered, trembling as his eyes stared straight at Kazuki.
Kazuki stood up. "What are you talking about, Shido?" Kazuki asked. "Did you hit your head in the impact?"
Shido's head shook violently back and forth. "I'm not Shido! I'm… I'm you! Himiko!"
Kazuki took a step backwards. Shido must have hit his head, if he was acting that oddly…. "Shido, I think you… you need a doctor. You've been hurt and you're talking crazy…" With that, Kazuki happened to slip, landing flat on his butt. He heard the sound of glass jingling together as he landed. "What the…" he asked as he reached around behind himself, shock slowly spreading over his face when he pulled Himiko's poisons out from his belt…
After a few moments of stunned silence, he looked up at Shido's body. "Himiko? Is that you in there?" Shido's head nodded. "It's me, Kazuki, in your body." He staggered to Himiko's feet. "I… the explosion must have done this to us!"
"So what do we do now?" Himiko asked. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life as… as… as a useless man!"
"We should… we should go to the Honky Tonk. If this happened to the others, that's the logical place for them all to converge. Once we're all back together, we can find a way to get back into our own bodies… not that I even really know… how we got out of our bodies… but… let's think about that later. I have a headache right now and can't think."
Himiko nodded from inside Shido's body and the two began walking.
-
Of course, Kazuki had been overlooking the fact that there was one person in the group for whom going to the Honky Tonk was not the logical first choice upon awakening. Akabane flexed his hands… no, he flexed Ban's hands, and smiled behind dark purple classes. Standing on top of a pile of broken boards from the explosion, a broad smile slipped across Ban's face. "I have the power of the Jyagan now," he smirked, his voice lost on the cold night winds.