Drabblefic: You Get What You Pay For (Get Backers/Harry Potter)
I have no excuse for this. XD It crawled into my head and demanded to be written, lest I be poked with scalpels.
Title: You Get What You Pay For
Author: Amethyst Hunter
Rating: PG (language)
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Notes: Request-fic for a friend who wanted to see an AU GB/HP crossover involving Horcruxes. :)
Disclaimer: I don't own either GB or HP; both entities belong to their creators Aoki-san and Ayamine-san, and J.K. Rowling, respectively. All plottage is done solely in the name of amusement. Especially amusement. Because we all know how Akabane is about that. XD
Summary: Harry & company's attempt to eliminate their problem only becomes the source for more problems, thanks to a certain Honky Tonk gang!
--
“Hevn-san really looks upset,” Natsumi whispered from behind the counter as she peered out over the Honky Tonk's dining area.
“So do the clients,” Kazuki, nearby, pointed out.
“I don't know, it looks like a tie for discord,” Paul said as he observed the tension from behind the safety of his ever-present newspaper.
“I dunno,” Shido muttered with a twisted grin. “Snakie-boy's looking the most pissed of the bunch, I think.”
“Wishful thinking,” Himiko commented.
Shido shrugged. “It's the circle of life, as it should be. Clients approach negotiator, negotiator tempts retrievers, snake bastard botches the job and loses all the money. If he wasn't such a snotrag I'd almost feel sorry for him. That -is- a lot of money to pour down the toilet bowl...”
They all watched while Hevn and the clients took turns reaming out the agents in question, who then proceeded to blame everything on outside forces of nature. More specifically, one whirling dervish who sat in the booth behind them, neat and tidy without a single thread or hair out of place, smugly oblivious to the verbal hexes flung his way as he calmly polished his scalpels.
“Tell me again,” Hevn began, her eyes blazing golden fury and her freshly polished manicure bearing serious signs of strain as she dug her nails into the tabletop. “Exactly what part of 'must locate cursed objects intact' did you guys fail to note?!”
“You were only supposed to find the Horcruxes. Disposing of them was supposed to be our job,” the young man with spectacles said.
“Yeah, well, obviously things didn't go as we planned, now did they?” a tattered-looking and soot-covered Ban snapped. “What's it matter anyway, the damn thing is destroyed like you wanted.”
“You don't understand the seriousness of our situation,” the young woman scowling at them said. “That Horcrux still exists, and as long as it does, He Who Shall Not Be Named - “
“Moldymort, Smellysnort, whatever his face was,” Ban waved a dismissive hand.
“ - he still remains powerful and therefore a grave threat to the world!”
The man in black piped up suddenly. “I thought I was the grave threat around here.”
They all stared at him. Then Ban shot up in his seat. “This is all your fault! You just had to have your precious fight - “
“But Ban-chan,” a confused Ginji, equally as dirtied and ragged as his partner, said as he looked from one angry face to another. “I thought that killing things was Akabane-san's job!”
“Why do you think I recruited him along with you two!” Hevn hissed.
“None of you get it!” the redhead sitting next to the bespectacled client snapped. “You can't just pitch a Horcrux off a cliff; it has to be undone by certain specific means!”
“Looked to me like the twelve tons of concrete that tumbled after it took care of the job well enough,” Ban countered. “That's a lot more than we can say for that duct-taped stick of yours - “
“It's a wand, you bloody git, and you'd better eat your words unless you want to eat slugs!”
“Ron,” whispered the girl next to him as she gripped his sleeve, “He deserves it, but I wouldn't. Remember what happened the last time you cast that curse!”
The redhead promptly fell silent, though he simmered a grudging look at Ban, who returned it with a baleful one of his own.
“We've been trying to tell you, it doesn't work like that.” The lead client pushed his glasses up on his nose - not in a manner unlike Ban's - and struck the tabletop with the flat of his palm. “The Horcrux was made by magic and magic is the only way to unmake it. If we don't do this properly the enemy can't be weakened - “
“I don't know about that,” the black-clad man commented in thoughtful remembrance. “He wasn't looking so well before he abruptly canceled on our battle. A pity,” he sighed. “We were having such fun and here I thought that I might have found a worthwhile adversary who could have let me behold my own true powers...”
Ban snarled at him. “You're just damn lucky your sneaky ass is so fast, otherwise he'd have turned you into a toad or something before he vanished - “ he looked to the clients again - “what was that thing you called it?”
“Apparation,” the girl said.
“A pity,” the dark one repeated. “I don't like it when my prey runs away. Why is it that all my best opponents flee instead of finishing our fights?”
“Oh, I don't know, maybe because they don't feel like eating daisy roots for breakfast and scarlet letter fashions don't look good on anybody?” Ban spat.
The head client continued, ignoring them. “Look, Voldemort can't be stopped by conventional methods. Spilling his blood alone, prematurely, won't do it. He has to be brought down using the same spells that form the basis of his existence. You retrievers never brought us the Horcrux like we hired you to, so we're not paying this exorbitant amount of money.” He slapped the piece of crumpled paper that Ban had shoved at him at the beginning of their meeting. “This isn't a service fee, this is a ransom note!”
“You want quality, you're gonna cough up for it! We Get Backers have a one hundred percent success rate!”
“It's extortion,” the girl agreed with her two friends.
“Yeah, mate, that's highway robbery for such shoddy business!” the redhead put in, his eyes briefly shooting towards Hevn, a sight which made the younger woman raise an eyebrow when she noticed how his eyes lingered upon the ample charms that the negotiator commanded. “At least the bird here does actual work for her outrageous fee!”
“The hell she does!” Ban roared. “Beach-ball bouncing in slip-proof bikinis doesn't count as work!”
Hevn's face promptly flushed scarlet. “I knew it! You did try to sabotage my top's strings!” She nodded towards the other female across from her. “I don't suppose you have any more anti-pervert protections you could cast?”
“Give me time and I can enchant this entire cafe' into an impregnable fortress of purity,” the girl answered with cool pride, which earned her a respectful look from Himiko.
“That would be a nice change. Might even attract some paying customers,” Paul muttered.
“She can, you know,” Ron said as he puffed out his chest. “Hermione's the smartest of any witch I know. She's got dozens of charms memorized!”
“You must not know many witches, then,” Ban said with plenty of acerbic scorn. “That doesn't say much for your group when I can whack her with one nightmare of a spell, and I don't even need a stupid twig or smelly potion to do it!”
“I still owe you one for that - that Evil Eye thing, that you made her see!” Ron growled. This time Hermione didn't try to hold him back when he half-rose in his seat.
“You want your sleepytime too?” Ban flexed his right fist as he fixed icy blue on his target. “I can arrange it, Weasel-boy - “
“The name's Weasley!”
“Over my dead body!” Hermione declared.
“That can be arranged too,” the man in black said, now pausing in his knife-cleaning and looking at their group with considerable interest.
Reminded of his presence once more, Ban shot him the dirtiest glare he could muster. “I said it before and I'm saying it again - this is all completely, entirely, and totally YOUR fault!” He turned to the clients and Hevn. “You came to us with the job - “
“-I- came to you with the job,” Hevn said stiffly.
“ - we did the job, we found the dumb-ass whore thingamajigger - “
“Horcrux,” Ginji added. His helpfulness earned him an instant hammering on the head. “OW! Ban-chan!”
“ - we were on our way back with it, which is what he - “ Ban jerked a thumb in the indifferent shadow's direction - “was SUPPOSED to be transporting, when we were jumped by a pack of those Death Eater dorks and that freak leader of theirs Baldyfort - “
Ron nudged his other companion. “At least we got rid of a bunch of those, huh, Harry?”
The transporter heard him and smiled. “You're welcome.”
“Uh...thanks,” a distinctly green-shaded Harry mumbled.
“ - and we would've gotten out of there without tearing up everything between heaven and hell, IF a certain bloodthirsty Aka-MORON hadn't decided to just ditch us to go play pin the scalpel on the sorcerer, nevermind the MONEY you three owe us for helping clean up what is my understanding happens to be YOUR mess to begin with!” Ban finished on a near-roar.
“I have already received my payment. How you earn or squander yours is of no concern to me,” the focus of his ire stated with the same eerie calm.
“Voldemort was the one who started the entire feud by attacking my family and me in the first place. I'm just trying to end it,” Harry snapped. “Since you two didn't perform the job to our satisfaction, we had to waste more time recovering the Horcrux so that we could destroy it properly.”
“What recovery? I told you, the thing was a goner as soon as that bridge was blasted into bits - “
Hermione reached into a small bag tethered to her wrist and pulled out the blackened remains of what had once been an identifiable headpiece. “Fortunately your negotiator had a backup plan. We hired another to finish the job.”
Both Get Backers stared at it. “How'd you dig it out from under all that rubble?” Ginji asked.
Hermione's gaze shifted across the room. Everyone else's did likewise, landing on a smirking Shido and a decidedly amused Himiko.
“Himiko-chan!” Ginji protested. “That job was gonna be our weekend beef roll money!”
Ban's face turned purple. “Her, I get, but you, you slick monkey-spit son of a - “
He whirled on the others, pointing at Harry. “They may have brought the damn Hairy-Cracks item to you, but you still owe us for the recovery half of the mission! My car needs a new transmission and I need new pants!” He flung his hands toward his singed and shredded clothes, what were left of them. “Do you have any idea how many pixies we had to wade through in that room alone?!”
“Or how many of those Dementor creeps,” Ginji moaned. “Being a walking flashlight is harder than it looks. I'm tapped out for current!”
“I had a perfectly delightful time,” Akabane said.
“This is ALL YOUR FAULT that I'm not getting my money!” Ban seethed at him.
“The deal's off anyway,” Harry said.
Akabane smiled back, edges glinting in deadly lavender eyes. “And if it is? What are you going to do about it, Midou-kun?”
Before fists, scalpels or wands could be raised, Paul said, “Take it outside the shop!” Much to his (and other patrons') relief, the group obeyed, ostensibly on the grounds that a protracted battle would be difficult given the current confined area. They filed out of the Honky Tonk, still arguing technicalities, Akabane eagerly sniffing at their heels for a potential conflict he could carve out of the war of words and Ginji alternating between nervous squeaks at having Doctor Jackal right on his tail and pleas for Ban to find a way to feed them despite the mission's chaotic conclusion.
Hevn was the only one who stayed behind. She fisted her chipped nails in her now-disheveled hair and thumped her forehead repeatedly on the tabletop. “Why? Why me?” she kept groaning. “I should have known those two would cost me my negotiator's fee with some insane and bizarre screwup!”
“I told you before, it's your own fault for suggesting that the clients include Akabane as part of the package,” an unsympathetic Himiko said to her. “You get what you pay for!”
--
Title: You Get What You Pay For
Author: Amethyst Hunter
Rating: PG (language)
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Notes: Request-fic for a friend who wanted to see an AU GB/HP crossover involving Horcruxes. :)
Disclaimer: I don't own either GB or HP; both entities belong to their creators Aoki-san and Ayamine-san, and J.K. Rowling, respectively. All plottage is done solely in the name of amusement. Especially amusement. Because we all know how Akabane is about that. XD
Summary: Harry & company's attempt to eliminate their problem only becomes the source for more problems, thanks to a certain Honky Tonk gang!
--
“Hevn-san really looks upset,” Natsumi whispered from behind the counter as she peered out over the Honky Tonk's dining area.
“So do the clients,” Kazuki, nearby, pointed out.
“I don't know, it looks like a tie for discord,” Paul said as he observed the tension from behind the safety of his ever-present newspaper.
“I dunno,” Shido muttered with a twisted grin. “Snakie-boy's looking the most pissed of the bunch, I think.”
“Wishful thinking,” Himiko commented.
Shido shrugged. “It's the circle of life, as it should be. Clients approach negotiator, negotiator tempts retrievers, snake bastard botches the job and loses all the money. If he wasn't such a snotrag I'd almost feel sorry for him. That -is- a lot of money to pour down the toilet bowl...”
They all watched while Hevn and the clients took turns reaming out the agents in question, who then proceeded to blame everything on outside forces of nature. More specifically, one whirling dervish who sat in the booth behind them, neat and tidy without a single thread or hair out of place, smugly oblivious to the verbal hexes flung his way as he calmly polished his scalpels.
“Tell me again,” Hevn began, her eyes blazing golden fury and her freshly polished manicure bearing serious signs of strain as she dug her nails into the tabletop. “Exactly what part of 'must locate cursed objects intact' did you guys fail to note?!”
“You were only supposed to find the Horcruxes. Disposing of them was supposed to be our job,” the young man with spectacles said.
“Yeah, well, obviously things didn't go as we planned, now did they?” a tattered-looking and soot-covered Ban snapped. “What's it matter anyway, the damn thing is destroyed like you wanted.”
“You don't understand the seriousness of our situation,” the young woman scowling at them said. “That Horcrux still exists, and as long as it does, He Who Shall Not Be Named - “
“Moldymort, Smellysnort, whatever his face was,” Ban waved a dismissive hand.
“ - he still remains powerful and therefore a grave threat to the world!”
The man in black piped up suddenly. “I thought I was the grave threat around here.”
They all stared at him. Then Ban shot up in his seat. “This is all your fault! You just had to have your precious fight - “
“But Ban-chan,” a confused Ginji, equally as dirtied and ragged as his partner, said as he looked from one angry face to another. “I thought that killing things was Akabane-san's job!”
“Why do you think I recruited him along with you two!” Hevn hissed.
“None of you get it!” the redhead sitting next to the bespectacled client snapped. “You can't just pitch a Horcrux off a cliff; it has to be undone by certain specific means!”
“Looked to me like the twelve tons of concrete that tumbled after it took care of the job well enough,” Ban countered. “That's a lot more than we can say for that duct-taped stick of yours - “
“It's a wand, you bloody git, and you'd better eat your words unless you want to eat slugs!”
“Ron,” whispered the girl next to him as she gripped his sleeve, “He deserves it, but I wouldn't. Remember what happened the last time you cast that curse!”
The redhead promptly fell silent, though he simmered a grudging look at Ban, who returned it with a baleful one of his own.
“We've been trying to tell you, it doesn't work like that.” The lead client pushed his glasses up on his nose - not in a manner unlike Ban's - and struck the tabletop with the flat of his palm. “The Horcrux was made by magic and magic is the only way to unmake it. If we don't do this properly the enemy can't be weakened - “
“I don't know about that,” the black-clad man commented in thoughtful remembrance. “He wasn't looking so well before he abruptly canceled on our battle. A pity,” he sighed. “We were having such fun and here I thought that I might have found a worthwhile adversary who could have let me behold my own true powers...”
Ban snarled at him. “You're just damn lucky your sneaky ass is so fast, otherwise he'd have turned you into a toad or something before he vanished - “ he looked to the clients again - “what was that thing you called it?”
“Apparation,” the girl said.
“A pity,” the dark one repeated. “I don't like it when my prey runs away. Why is it that all my best opponents flee instead of finishing our fights?”
“Oh, I don't know, maybe because they don't feel like eating daisy roots for breakfast and scarlet letter fashions don't look good on anybody?” Ban spat.
The head client continued, ignoring them. “Look, Voldemort can't be stopped by conventional methods. Spilling his blood alone, prematurely, won't do it. He has to be brought down using the same spells that form the basis of his existence. You retrievers never brought us the Horcrux like we hired you to, so we're not paying this exorbitant amount of money.” He slapped the piece of crumpled paper that Ban had shoved at him at the beginning of their meeting. “This isn't a service fee, this is a ransom note!”
“You want quality, you're gonna cough up for it! We Get Backers have a one hundred percent success rate!”
“It's extortion,” the girl agreed with her two friends.
“Yeah, mate, that's highway robbery for such shoddy business!” the redhead put in, his eyes briefly shooting towards Hevn, a sight which made the younger woman raise an eyebrow when she noticed how his eyes lingered upon the ample charms that the negotiator commanded. “At least the bird here does actual work for her outrageous fee!”
“The hell she does!” Ban roared. “Beach-ball bouncing in slip-proof bikinis doesn't count as work!”
Hevn's face promptly flushed scarlet. “I knew it! You did try to sabotage my top's strings!” She nodded towards the other female across from her. “I don't suppose you have any more anti-pervert protections you could cast?”
“Give me time and I can enchant this entire cafe' into an impregnable fortress of purity,” the girl answered with cool pride, which earned her a respectful look from Himiko.
“That would be a nice change. Might even attract some paying customers,” Paul muttered.
“She can, you know,” Ron said as he puffed out his chest. “Hermione's the smartest of any witch I know. She's got dozens of charms memorized!”
“You must not know many witches, then,” Ban said with plenty of acerbic scorn. “That doesn't say much for your group when I can whack her with one nightmare of a spell, and I don't even need a stupid twig or smelly potion to do it!”
“I still owe you one for that - that Evil Eye thing, that you made her see!” Ron growled. This time Hermione didn't try to hold him back when he half-rose in his seat.
“You want your sleepytime too?” Ban flexed his right fist as he fixed icy blue on his target. “I can arrange it, Weasel-boy - “
“The name's Weasley!”
“Over my dead body!” Hermione declared.
“That can be arranged too,” the man in black said, now pausing in his knife-cleaning and looking at their group with considerable interest.
Reminded of his presence once more, Ban shot him the dirtiest glare he could muster. “I said it before and I'm saying it again - this is all completely, entirely, and totally YOUR fault!” He turned to the clients and Hevn. “You came to us with the job - “
“-I- came to you with the job,” Hevn said stiffly.
“ - we did the job, we found the dumb-ass whore thingamajigger - “
“Horcrux,” Ginji added. His helpfulness earned him an instant hammering on the head. “OW! Ban-chan!”
“ - we were on our way back with it, which is what he - “ Ban jerked a thumb in the indifferent shadow's direction - “was SUPPOSED to be transporting, when we were jumped by a pack of those Death Eater dorks and that freak leader of theirs Baldyfort - “
Ron nudged his other companion. “At least we got rid of a bunch of those, huh, Harry?”
The transporter heard him and smiled. “You're welcome.”
“Uh...thanks,” a distinctly green-shaded Harry mumbled.
“ - and we would've gotten out of there without tearing up everything between heaven and hell, IF a certain bloodthirsty Aka-MORON hadn't decided to just ditch us to go play pin the scalpel on the sorcerer, nevermind the MONEY you three owe us for helping clean up what is my understanding happens to be YOUR mess to begin with!” Ban finished on a near-roar.
“I have already received my payment. How you earn or squander yours is of no concern to me,” the focus of his ire stated with the same eerie calm.
“Voldemort was the one who started the entire feud by attacking my family and me in the first place. I'm just trying to end it,” Harry snapped. “Since you two didn't perform the job to our satisfaction, we had to waste more time recovering the Horcrux so that we could destroy it properly.”
“What recovery? I told you, the thing was a goner as soon as that bridge was blasted into bits - “
Hermione reached into a small bag tethered to her wrist and pulled out the blackened remains of what had once been an identifiable headpiece. “Fortunately your negotiator had a backup plan. We hired another to finish the job.”
Both Get Backers stared at it. “How'd you dig it out from under all that rubble?” Ginji asked.
Hermione's gaze shifted across the room. Everyone else's did likewise, landing on a smirking Shido and a decidedly amused Himiko.
“Himiko-chan!” Ginji protested. “That job was gonna be our weekend beef roll money!”
Ban's face turned purple. “Her, I get, but you, you slick monkey-spit son of a - “
He whirled on the others, pointing at Harry. “They may have brought the damn Hairy-Cracks item to you, but you still owe us for the recovery half of the mission! My car needs a new transmission and I need new pants!” He flung his hands toward his singed and shredded clothes, what were left of them. “Do you have any idea how many pixies we had to wade through in that room alone?!”
“Or how many of those Dementor creeps,” Ginji moaned. “Being a walking flashlight is harder than it looks. I'm tapped out for current!”
“I had a perfectly delightful time,” Akabane said.
“This is ALL YOUR FAULT that I'm not getting my money!” Ban seethed at him.
“The deal's off anyway,” Harry said.
Akabane smiled back, edges glinting in deadly lavender eyes. “And if it is? What are you going to do about it, Midou-kun?”
Before fists, scalpels or wands could be raised, Paul said, “Take it outside the shop!” Much to his (and other patrons') relief, the group obeyed, ostensibly on the grounds that a protracted battle would be difficult given the current confined area. They filed out of the Honky Tonk, still arguing technicalities, Akabane eagerly sniffing at their heels for a potential conflict he could carve out of the war of words and Ginji alternating between nervous squeaks at having Doctor Jackal right on his tail and pleas for Ban to find a way to feed them despite the mission's chaotic conclusion.
Hevn was the only one who stayed behind. She fisted her chipped nails in her now-disheveled hair and thumped her forehead repeatedly on the tabletop. “Why? Why me?” she kept groaning. “I should have known those two would cost me my negotiator's fee with some insane and bizarre screwup!”
“I told you before, it's your own fault for suggesting that the clients include Akabane as part of the package,” an unsympathetic Himiko said to her. “You get what you pay for!”
--