Thunder

A Get Backers Fanfic by Rabid Lola

A/N: Because it was an interesting concept. And because I wanted to write a Ban and Ginji friendship fic.

I'm not sure if I've got the time periods right here (e.g. what age Ban was when he went to Mugenjou and when he met the Mirokus) but anyway…

This is the shortest fic (or story) I've ever written. :D

He had been afraid of thunder, when he was a child.

He hadn't liked its loudness, its suddenness…the way it shook you from head to toe and rumbled through your body. He had feared lightning, too, because he soon learned that lightning heralded thunder.

The Mirokus used to tease him about it, friends as they were before. It was something they could use against the arrogant runt when his pride got out of hand.

His mother used to hold him tight and tell him there was nothing to be afraid of. Of course, this was before she dubbed him a devil's child, before she willingly pushed him into the cold, wet rain, to run and find his grandmother's house in the storm.

He had hated thunder and lightning even more after that.

One memory stands clear in his mind, though. A night soon after his arrival at the obaasan's, when a tempest was at its height. Thunder had crashed like it was the end of the world; lightning had torn open the sky to illuminate the jagged floods of rain. His grandmother had looked up from a diagram of magic she was completing, to see him shivering at the top of the steps.

"You're afraid of thunder, Ban?" Harsh and strict as she had been, she was the only one in the whole of Germany who had truly cared for his welfare.

He had glared at her, shaking his head stubbornly, then changed his mind as a blinding bolt and ear-splitting crack sizzled down just beside the house. The shriek that escaped him had been drowned out by the ensuing roar of chaos.

Her eyes, as blue as his, had gazed up at him, then, hooded and distant. A strange, detached smile had touched her face. "How ironic."

At seven, he hadn't known the meaning of "ironic". In later years, when he discovered it, he remembered what his grandmother had said, and he wondered about it. He found out, soon enough.

The day he had entered Mugejou had been marked with thunder, too. The wrath of its Emperor had awakened a storm, and he had fought the Raitei amidst the lightning and the rain. At nineteen he had no longer possessed a child's terror of the elements, and yet when he faced the young man who embodied them, a ghost of the old fear had touched him, for a moment.

Long and hard that battle had been, neither man gaining nor giving quarter. In that short span of time he had seen the full extent of the Raitei, just as the Raitei had seen the full extent of Midou Ban.

And after he had seen the Raitei, he had discovered the man no one else knew: Amano Ginji.

He jerks a little now as thunder crashes overhead, storm clouds darkening the night sky of Shinjuku. Lightning throws his face into sharp relief as he gazes out the car window streaming with rain, his heart pounding wildly in an instinctive reaction.

In the seat beside him, his best friend stirs and opens an eye. A soft chuckle. "Relax, Ban-chan," Ginji says comfortably. "It's only a storm."

A wry smile twitches the corner of Ban's mouth, before he gruffly answers that he hadn't been afraid.

And it's true, he isn't afraid of thunder anymore.

Because now, thunder is one of the most important things in his life.

…--EnD--…